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v—; 





CONTAINING 

iNDON HIGH LIFE -LOW LIFE THE SENATE- 
(GEES’ HALL-ROTTEN ROW-PETTICOAT LANE 
IEDIOAL STUDENT-CABMEN- BETTING MEN- 
OSTERMONGER-SNOBS-POOR-THIEYES, &e. 




















































































































































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DIPBOSE’S 


BOOK ABOUT LONDON 

AND 


LONDON LIFE. 
















































































































































































































































































































































































DIPROSE’S 


BOOK ABOUT 


LONDON 


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LIFE. 



NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS. 


London: 

DIPROSE and BATEMAN, 13, Portugal Street. 
All Booksellers and Railway Stations. 

























PRINTED BY DIPROSE AND BATEMAN, PORTUGAL STREET, 

Lincoln's inn fields. 




60 

\l> 


A) 'S> 


j ) 



CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

London Streets—S hops—Bazaars—London at Five o’clock in 
the Morning—Temple Bar—Walks through London—London 
Traffic—Irishman’s First Visit to London—London Tramways 
—Quiet spots of London—Markets in London ... page 7 

CHAPTER II. 

London River Thames—B illingsgate—The Victoria Embankment 
—Steamboats—Thames Tunnel—Tower Subway ... p. 16 

CHAPTER III. 

London in the Senate—L ord Palmerston—The late M.P. for Sligo 
—The Sleepy M.P.—The Whipper-in—Ayes and Noes— 
John Bright . p. 21 

CHAPTER IV. 

London at Cogers’ Hall—T he Temple of Eloquence and Thought 
—The Speeches—The True Orator ... ... ... p. 26 

CHAPTER V. 

London in Rotten Row—The Famous Ride—The Fashion and 
Rank of London—The Iron Grey Arab—The Young and 
Pretty English Girl—Here’s Another Guy— A Lady by no 
means Young—The Galloping Snob ... ... ... p. 33 

CHAPTER VI. 

London in Petticoat Lane—T he Unknown Regions of the 
Metropolis—The Clamour in the Mart—’Street Literature— 
The Tribe of Israel—Here is a Bumpkin fresh from Romford— 
Jack Tar from the Sea, as Green as the Briny Ocean p. 38 

CHAPTER VII. 

London Volunteers and Sports—N apoleon the Great—The 
Great Duke—Militia — Prize Ring—Bear Garden—Dog¬ 
fighting—Rat-killing—Dr. Watts ... ... ... p. 44 

CHAPTER VITI. 

London High Life—L ondon Season—London Fashions p. 47 

CHAPTER IX. 

London Low Life—T he Costermonger out for the Day p. 52 

CHAPTER X. 

London Amusements—T he Theatres—Operas—London Actor— 
Concerts—Music Halls—Ballet—Music Hall Snob—Dancing 

Rooms—Niggers—Organ Grinders. p. 58 

CHAPTER XI. 

London at Three in the Morning—C ovent Garden Market— 
Night Coffee Stall—Scene at a London Police Station p. 70 



6 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XII. 

London Medical Students— Their Early Career and Pathway of 
Success—The Medical Profession . p. 81 

CHAPTER XIII. 

London Clubs, Restaurants and Luncheon Bars ... p. 92 

CHAPTER XIY. 

London Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Marketing 

p. 97 


CHAPTER XY. 

London Boys and Girls— The Shoeblack — News Boy — A aga- 
bond Boy—Flower Girl... ... ... ... ... p• 100 

CHAPTER XVI. 

London Cabman— Working a Cab comes ork’ard ... p. 106 


CHAPTER XVII. 

London Betting Men —Book Makers—Police Raids ... j?. Ill 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

London Railways —Old Coach Offices—Streets in the Olden Time 
—London in the Winter ... ... ... ... p. 115 


CHAPTER XIX. 


London Various —Fire Brigade—London Advertising—London 
Auctions and Knock-outs—Irish in London—London Snobs 

p. 127 


CHAPTER XX. 

London Poor —Mr. Peabody—London Co-operative Stores— 
London Cheap Beds—London Paupers and Cadgers p. 135 


CHAPTER XXI. 

London Thieves —The Prison Van—A Thief’s Opinion of the 
Laws—Confessions of a Burglar—London Swindlers—Sharpers 
—London Vice—Fences ... ... ... ... p. 149 

CHAPTER XXII. 

London at a Glance— London Growth — Air — Water — Food — 
Post and Telegraph Offices—Charities—School Board—Ragged 
Schools—Police—Public Buildings, Parks, Squares—London 
Improvements, &c. ... ... ... ... ... p. 170 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

London Doings —London Benevolence—London Apprenticeship 
Society—London Deaths from Violence—London Barmaids— 
London Cats—London Accidents — London Prostitutes — 
London, South—London Ragged in the Centre—London 
Crossing-Sweepers — London Street-Selling—London Incen¬ 
diarism—Columbia Market—London Exhibition ... p. 188 


DIPROSE’S 


BOOK ABOUT LONDON 

AND 

LONDON LIFE. 


CHAPTER I. 

LONDON STREETS. 

In the vast tide of human beings who, at morning, noon, 
and night, wear out the flags of London with their in¬ 
cessant footsteps, each man carries within his breast his 
own object, and the wisdom of Shakespeare is justi¬ 
fied, that every man hath his occupation. The joyous 
and elastic step of youth; the tread of age, which 
clings to earth, of which it is soon to form a part; the 
laughing eye of the lover, and the moistened eye of 
sorrow, all have their own goal, all hasten to their own 
secret destinations. The shrill morning cry of the 
sweep first awakes drowsy London to begin its never- 
ending toil; the milkman follows, with falsetto notes, 
announcing the strange compound which he carries; 
and the postman, with news from all nations lumbering 
at his back, announces, with the same knock, what 
sheds universal joy or universal sorrow. The omnibus 
driver mounts his box to begin the most monotonous of 
labours, after dreaming over night, in his disturbed 
sleep, of the signs of the various public-houses where 
he takes his momentary rests during the daytime. The 
worker now starts from his country residence, whilst the 
morning dew is upon the flowers that he rarely sees, 
and the undisturbed sleep of the innocent rests upon 




8 


LONDON STREETS—SHOPS AND BAZAARS. 


the children for whom he toils, and ultimately sinks 
into an early grave. Ah! how much easier to enjoy 
ourselves in the journey of life, and not wait until the 
latter end arrives, and we can joy no more. He who 
is a close observer of the variety of expressions of 
countenance we note in the streets of London (which 
Lord Macaulay declared was to him a never-failing 
fund for thought), cannot fail to mark the deep 
anxiety which shows the city man ; and the pointless 
expression which betokens the West-end man. Loll 
on, roll on, roll on, never retreating tide, until 
the heavenly Sabbath comes, and all is still save the 
vibration of many bells that announce the advent of 
the Prince of Peace. This is the true holiday; not 
that half one which immediately precedes it, spent not 
in fields, or in what Milton calls Olympian games, hut 
in pent-up public-houses and smoky bagatelle rooms. 
Night once more: myriads of lights burning in the 
streets and flinging their flaming glare across the broad 
skies ; millions of lights, from the proud palaces of the 
great, from the fireless garrets of the poor, from rooms 
where the new-horn infant gives his first cry, where the 
worn-out being gives his last sigh; deserted flags that 
vibrate no more, unless to the monotonous steps of the 
policeman. Still, still, still is all. But the morning 
breaks in purple splendour. London Life once more 
roll on, roll on, roll on! * 

In these days there is much beauty in the London 
shops, many of them having plate glass windows and 

* London continues to increase and improve. During last year 
there were built 9,682 houses, together with 3,229 in the course of 
erection, 220 new streets and one square, measuring upwards of 42 
miles. The population of London on the night of the 2nd of April, 
1871, within the radial lines of the Metropolitan Police District, 
drawn from twelve to fifteen miles around Charing Cross, was 
3,883,092 souls. 



STRAND AND TEMPLE BAR 


9 


bright gas lamps; they begin to open about seven o’clock, 
after the workmen’s trains have carried thousands of 
the working classes to their day’s work, who may be 
seen hurrying along the principal streets when London 
seems to begin to wake up. 



Mr. Noble says, “At this moment any passengers 
along the Strand must be woefully impressed with 
the hopeless prospect of Temple Bar, the almost last 
relic of the geographical sovereignty of London City. 
Temple Bar looks now as if it really needed friends. 
Coming from the City westward its aspect is forlorn and 
hopeless in the extreme.” 

THE METROPOLITAN PROPHECY. 

(Written on the report of removing Temple Bar in 1788.) 

If that gate is pulled down, ’twixt the Court and the City 
You’ll blend in one mass, prudent, worthless and witty, 

If you league cit and lordling, as brother and brother, 

You'll break order’s chain, and they’ll war with each other. 
















































































10 


LONDON STREETS-MONMOUTH STREET. 


Like the great wall of China, it keeps out the Tartars, 

From making irruptions, where industry barters. 

Like Samson's wild foxes they’ll fire your houses 
And madden your spinsters, and cozen your spouses ; 

They’ll destroy in one sweep both the mart and the forum, 
Which your fathers held dear and their fathers before them. 

As the pedestrian walks through London, he may 
find himself in the dense and poor neighbourhood of 
Monmouth Street, where he will be puzzled which most 
to wonder at of three things—the number of noisy, 
dirty, but happy children playing and loitering within 
and without the cellar-shops; the countless array 
and curious cut of the second-hand clothing; or 
the many second-hand boots and shoes which are 
ranged round the margin of each cellar-shop—for 
every house has its cellar, to which access is gained by 
a flight of steps from the street, and every cellar is a 
shop. 

The numberless branches of commercial dealings in 
the metropolis, to say nothing of the constant inter¬ 
course of the inhabitants, keep the principal thorough¬ 
fares filled from morning till night with an endless 
string and diversity of vehicles, heavily laden carts, 
private carriages, travellers’ traps, and public convey¬ 
ances, such as omnibuses and cabs. Between four and 
six o’clock in the afternoon, when the city is emptying, 
Cheapside, Fleet Street, the Strand, and Holborn are 
almost impassable from the multitude of vehicles rolling 
on in uninterrupted succession, and in rows three and 
even four deep. As for London Bridge, it is at all 
hours of the day crowded with vehicles, and so closely 
as every now and then to cause a dead lock and com¬ 
plete stoppage of the thoroughfare. 

Upon the occasion of an Irishman’s first visit to 
London, he became so overwhelmed by the traffic in 
the streets, and fearing in his bewilderment that he 


LONDON TRAFFIC—TRAMWAYS. 


11 



would be run over, exclaimed, while crossing Fleet 
Street, to a man driving a fine horse, “ By Jabus, if 
you run over me, and loll me, I’ll knock you down!” 

The present tramway traveller in London will 
observe a remarkable change for the better since 
George Francis Train—some ten years ago—opened a 
tramway in the Westminster and Bayswater Hoads, 
which speculation turned out a failure, in consequence 
of the injury done to cabs and carriages whenever 
they went across the rails. There are now several 
of these roads laid with narrow tracks of iron for 
the more easy transit of large passenger carriages, 
which are generally seen heavily laden, especially in 
the south and east of London, where they run from the 
bridges to Kennington, Brixton and Greenwich, and 
from the City to Bow and Stratford, and in the north, 




































































































































12 


LONDON STREETS-QUIET SPOTS. 


where they run along the City Hoad to the Angel 
at Islington, and thence to the Cock at Highbury. 
It is now a luxury to ride in them, after being stoiued 
away in our ordinary omnibus,* where humanity is 
piled away to such a height—to use a Yankee phrase— 
that it resembles a slave ship upon the coast of Africa 
in every particular, only that we who ride in them are 
white and free, and not blackies and slaves. 

The quiet spots of London unquestionably are the 
Inns of Law. Gray’s Inn, the literary home of the 



* London omnibus traffic receipts at the present time, amount to 
about £10,000 per week. In 1870, 1,268 omnibuses were licensed, 
659 reports were made against them during the year, and 398 were 
rejected as unfit for public use. 1,911 licenses were granted to 
drivers, and 2,404 to conductors. A large number of good and 
commodious omnibuses, well fitted and furnished, have been put 
on the streets. 1,337 reports have been made by the police against 
horses used in public carriages as being unfit for public use, and con¬ 
victions were obtained in most cases when taken before magistrates. 


















































































































































































INNS OF COURT AND MARKETS. 


13 


great Bacon, with its noble trees, under whose shade 
he put together thoughts that have rendered him im¬ 
mortal, is as still as the grave, although surrounded 
by the most turbulent of neighbourhoods. The Temple 
looks as if brave Christian knights never clashed their 
arms there; the hurrying clerk, with his rapid step, and 
the great advocate, lost in thought, alone occupy the 
scene, whilst the joyous laugh of childhood is heard 
beneath trees planted by Raleigh. Lincoln’s Inn pre¬ 
sents a more hurrying life, but the Elizabethan windows 
and narrow passages mark the antiquity of an Inn that 
has produced almost all our great lights in equity. 
Clement’s Inn, near which will be raised the great 
Temple of Justice, was celebrated at one period for its 
literary lights, and is now held in recollection as the spot 
through which Samuel Johnson strode, accompanied by 
his faithful biographer Boswell. 

The markets in London are more multifarious 
and extensive than even the experienced inhabitant 
is himself probably aware of. However, the fancy 
for occupying certain districts adapted for carrying 
on the same pursuit is so evident, that, where the 
congregation of similar trades exist, it is but natural 
that such central emporiums should come under the 
denomination of “ Markets.” Covent Garden market 
is, perhaps, the most attractive and pleasant one 
in town; even the vendors partake the general 
freshness of the articles for sale, and, in its peculiar 
features will be found most accurately described (past 
and present), in another portion of this volume. 
Here, therefore, we may simply remark that the 
Borough green market, Castle Street market, Islington 
market, Oxford Street market, Farringdon Street mar¬ 
ket, and many more, may make puny attempts at 
exaltation—but Covent Garden, with all its stinted 



14 


LONDON STREETS—MARKETS. 


proportions (which, the Duke of Bedford, the noble 
owner, neglects to enlarge), and its thousands of 
inconveniences in access and egress around and about 
it at every point, stands pre-eminent, the one cynosure 
of the Londoners, and has the “ voice potential as 
double of the Duke’s.” The meat market on the old 
Smithfield site is one of the grand sights of London, 
and certainly is a marvel of ingenuity and elegance in 
its construction. When we read of scarcity of pro¬ 
visions, and enter the precincts of this market palace 
to behold the thousands of tons of meat hanging or 
packed in every conceivable space, all thoughts of 
famine vanish from the mind, for plenty is so abundant 
as seemingly to defy want and privation everywhere for 
any time to come. Newgate meat market is fading by 
degrees, while the poultry market—where the prize 
turkeys flutter so temptingly at Christmastide—seems 
to flourish in its stead. Billingsgate market for fish is 
a world too small for its large shanks ; while Columbia 
market was an admirable effort to relieve this plethora 
of Lower Thames Street. Billingsgate is a regal 
domain to its many hereditary frequenters, and takes 

E recedence against the kingdom. Even artificial flowers 
ave their market, and most “ do congregate” in 
Clerkenwell. Ships have their markets, and assemble 
in the Docks. Carriages have their markets and are 
to be found in Long Acre. Bonnets have their markets 
and may be discovered in Cranboume Street. The 
newspapers affect a market, and settle in Fleet Street. 
The book market is in Paternoster Bow. The bankers 
establish their market in Lombard Street; and the 
market for old clothes is in Houndsditch. Petticoat 
Lane and the Caledonian Boad are markets for every¬ 
thing that is worn threadbare, of all sorts and all 
descriptions of manufacture, from an aged elephant to 


MARKETS—LONDON PEOPLE, TRADE, ETC. 15 

a mouse-trap. The poorest of the very poor are here 
met in their own scanty resources, and the marketings 
are remarkable for their fractional amounts. Mark 
Lane is a market for corn, where samples command 
orders for fabulous amounts. Cheese, butter, eggs and 
bacon are to be found mixed up in every market in 
London, except Co vent Garden. Hay has been ejected 
from the Haymarket and pitched into Whitechapel vi 
et armis. Even toys have their market in the Lowther 
Arcade, and the youthful mind can there walk in 
paradise while selecting his playthings to take back 
with him into the country. While last, but not least 
in our dear love, the matrimonial markets are in Rotten 
Row, the Crystal Palace and the Zoological Gardens. 
There the sweetest young ladies can be wooed and won, 
and thus a stimulant is given to every market in the 
known world. 

London grows as the power of England grows ; it is 
the emporium of capital; and its people are in com¬ 
munication by birth and blood, by trade and intelligence 
with all the affiliated cities in these islands; the people 
of London are not only disposed to trade, but their 
commercial character stands unrivalled. Looked at in 
any light, the magnitude and growth of London are 
marvellous; it is unsurpassed by any other place in the 
world for health, commerce, and wealth ; she stands by 
her river, her railways, her public buildings, her grand 
embankment, and her magnificent bridges, the Queen 
City of the world. 

the earliest mention of London as a commercial city 
occurs in the works of Bede, who, in referring to events 
of the year A.D. 604, describes London, though at that 
period the capital of one of the smallest kingdoms of 
England, as, “by its happy situation on the banks of 
the noble navigable river Thames, the emporium for 
many nations repairing to it by land and sea.” 


16 


CHAPTER II. 

RIVER THAMES-BILLI NGSGATE. 

The choked up and crowded streets are greatly re¬ 
lieved by the traffic that goes on upon the bosom of that 



“ Large, gentle, deep, majestic King of Floods,” 

as the poet Thomson poetically describes the River 
Thames. The noble river which forms the Port of 
London, possesses all the requirements necessary in a 
port. 

Billingsgate at Five o’clock in the Morning.— 
No matter what weather wet or dry, as the clock strikes 
five, the hell rings and the market opens; the vessels 
alongside, the vans and carts from the several railway 





























































































VICTORIA EMBANKMENT-STEAMBOAT PIERS. 17 

stations are all being emptied, the bustle and confusion 
commences, and the scene altogether is wonderful. 
Even at this early hour the London fishmongers pay 
good prices for the best fish, and the small fishmongers, 
street dealers and costermongers, rush in and purchase 
everything that is left. 

The Victoria Embankment, reaching from West¬ 
minster Bridge in a westward direction to Blackfriars 
Bridge in the east, forms a wide and convenient line of 
communication between the fashionable and business 
parts of London, and in its improvement of the river’s 
bank is as ornamental as useful. It is the greatest 
step towards the beautification of London which has 
ever been adopted; there is no exaggeration in saying 
that, when the trees grow and splendid statuary is 
erected, the Thames Embankment will become the 
noblest promenade in Europe. The ancient site of 
the Temple Gardens has been considerably increased 
by this vast improvement, and the wearied student can 
now refresh his learned lore, not merely upon the 
greensward alone, but looking at the same time on a 
crowded thoroughfare, and the most historical and 
richest river in the world. The public have stoutly 
resisted any attempt to utilize the Victoria Embankment 
by the erection of houses without any consideration 
for the beautiful—the old, old sin of London building. 
The Sunday Times says, “ After all, the Thames Em¬ 
bankment may be called a street—the finest in the 
world—with a considerable stream of water running 
through it.” There are some comfortable-looking 
houses between the Temple and Somerset House, 
breaking out in bow-windows wherever they can get an 
opportunity; the} r all look like the backs of houses 
pretending to be front. The streets approaching to 
the Victoria Embankment contain mostly houses that 


13 


RIVE R THAMES-STEAMBOATS. 


are used for snug private hotels and lodging-houses 
where our country cousins stay, if they do not stay 
with us; they are much nearer to the theatres, the 
cattle show, and the sights of London. The steamboat 
piers cause a great traffic along this noble thoroughfare. 

London Steamboats. — London cannot be fairly 
viewed, nor its vast extent justly appreciated, until 
the journey by water is made from Chelsea Bridge, 
as far as Greenwich and Woolwich. The steam¬ 
boats have to pass under no less than ten large bridges. 
The grandeur and extent of the commercial prosperity 
of the kingdom will be readily understood, when the 
steamer has once emerged from under the arches of 
London Bridge, passing the forest of masts in the 
immense and commodious docks, and through succeed¬ 
ing tiers and lines of vessels, that are moored along the 
banks, for miles beyond the port of London itself. 
There arc over fifty of these steam vessels devoted 
solely to the exigencies of passenger locomotion. 
But it is on the Sunday afternoon, in the fine months, 
that the carrying capabilities of the river steamers are 
tested to the utmost, the passengers being packed to¬ 
gether, standing or sitting, till all movement becomes 
impossible, and the crew can scarcely pass along the 
decks to fulfil their necessary duties. The living freight, 
in this case, is mostly composed of humble pleasure 
seekers on their way to Greenwich, North Woolwich, 
Battersea Park, Cremorne Gardens, Kew Gardens’ 
Bichmond, Hampton Court, etc., to get the taste of 
fresh air and the sight of herbage and flowers that 
arc denied to so many amongst them during the 
toiling week. So crowded are the boats, indeed, upon 
these occasions, as also others when excursions or rowing 
matches attract the Londoners on the water, that the 
steamers reel to and fro, and fairly wallow in the stream 
with the unwonted and oft hazardous burthen of mortality. 


DEAF WATERMAN-THAMES TUNNEL* 


19' 


It is said that a waterman, who pretended to be 
deaf, once plied his oars on Father Thames and was 
extensively supported. Barristers desirous of drawing 
in eloquence with fresh air, and addressing an imaginary 
Court undisturbed, would eagerly employ this seem¬ 
ingly unconscious boatman. M.P’s., bursting with ideas 
which should electrify the House, would vent them in 
the silent waterman’s boat. This artful sculler was 
always at a premium for lovers’ trips. Must it not 
have been delightful to be gently ferried along the 
silvery bosom of the river on a bright summer evening 
by a deaf waterman ! Then would be the time to 
pour into the willing listening ear the honied words of 
love, attachment, and constancy, without a witness to the 
sweet and solemn declaration. This jolly waterman 
did well, kept his countenance and counsel, received his 
silver and was silent. 

The Thames Tunnel, is a beautiful double archway 
measuring twelve hundred feet, that took sixteen 
years to complete, from 1825 to 1841. The long 
course of its construction was attended with about 
half-a-dozen breakings down of the bottom of the 
river, but though these frequent irruptions were sud¬ 
den and flooded it with water, no one is- believed to 
have lost his life. When it was finished it was- found 
to have cost over £600,000, and like most of Brunei’s 
undertakings, a great engineering achievement, but not 
worth much as a practical venture, for it never was 
used much as a roadway by people desirous of getting 
on the other side of the Tham.es> be it at Wapping at 
one extremity, or Rotherhithe at the other. But now" 
it is the means of conveying by rail thousands every 
day from the north to the south side of the Thames, or 


mce-versa. 


Notwithstanding the failure of the Thames Tunnel 
a number of enterprising persons formed into a com 

b 2 


20 


RIVER THAMES-LONDON IN MINIATURE. 


pany, have recently made another tunnel under the 
Thames, at the bottom of Tower Hill, known as the 
Tower Subway. It has no carriage way, only a foot¬ 
path, and by means of this great subterranean excava¬ 
tion—a splendid specimen of modern engineering— 
passengers are enabled to cross under the river from 
shore to shore for the slight payment only of a halfpenny. 

London is a world in miniature. The population of ten Londons, 
it has been truly said, would equal that of all Great Britain and 
Ireland. That of three hundred and fifty Londons would people 
the whole globe. Every eight minutes of every day of every year, 
one person dies in London ; and in every five minutes of every 
day in the year, one is born. It contains 100,000 winter tramps, 
40,000 costermongers, 30,000 paupers in the unions, with a criminal 
class, of whom, in 1867—66,000 being committed to prison in the 
year, 50,000 men and 16,000 women,—it was found that only 
7,000 out of the whole number could read or write. Suppose an 
average town with a population of 10,000 persons; there are in 
London, on Sunday, as many people at work as would fill ten such 
towns, and as many gin-drinkers as would fill fourteen. Two such 
towns London could people with fallen women ; one with gamblers ; 
three with thieves and receivers of stolen goods : and two with 
children trained in crime. It comprises two such towns of French 
people, four of Germans, one of Greeks, and more Jews than are 
to be found in all Palestine. It has as many Irish as would fill the 
city of Lublin, and more Roman Catholics than would fill the 
city of Rome. It has 20,000 public houses and beer shops 
trequented by 500,000 people as customers. In London, one in 
every 890 is insane ; there is one baker for every 1,200 persons, 
one butcher for every 1,500, one grocer for every 1,800, and one 
publican for every 650. We have 600 clergymen of the Established 
Church, 553 churches, 512,067 sittings, and adding other com¬ 
munities, we have a total of 1,357 ministers and 1,316 places of 
worship .—City Press. 

But whether on the river or in the street, the traffic 
which unfolds itself' to the eyes of the visitor, is a 
scene that from its immensity impresses itself vividly 
oil his imagination, and fills him with the utmost 
astonishment. In a word, London great and London 
small, London rich and London poor, London virtuous, 
London vicious, it is beyond all doubt the most won¬ 
derful place in the world. 


21 

CHAPTER III. 

LONDON IN THE SENATE. 

The senate of St. Stephen’s holds its solemn delibera¬ 
tions at Westminster. You approach it through the 



vast hall, surmounted by Irish oak, and crowded with 
many historical traditions. Through this hall the 










































































































































22 LONDON IN THE SENATE-PALMERSTON. 

majority of the members pass, and upon remarkable 
and exciting political occasions groups of persons are 
scattered around, in order to witness the mincing steps 
and downcast eyes of Disraeli, and the inspired-looking, 
yet haggard, aspect of Gladstone. There are two 
pleasant legends about Palmerston connected with St. 
Stephen’s. It was upon a great event, and the huge hall 
was crowded. Some time previously a most unfounded 
charge of criminal conversation was brought against 
this veteran statesman, and the lawyer’s clerk ran 
amongst the spectators showing the legal documents 
from the Divorce Court, which he had to serve upon 
his lordship. Presently amidst a loud and prolonged 
burst of applause the genial old man, who vindicated 
the honour of England abroad, and soothed her into a 
state of political coma at home, appeared. The clerk 
immediately stepped forward, and before the already 
apprised audience served the document upon the aged 
statesman. lie looked at it, and with a smile re¬ 
marked : “ Oh, yes; thank you. Boys will be boys , 
the ivorld all over.” An uncontrollable peal of laughter 
accompanied his lordship into the House. Dpon 
another occasion Wall, the celebrated Chartist, stepped 
forward from a group of spectators, and held out his 
hand to Lord Palmerston ; with that caution attached 
to age, his lordship slowly held out his hand in return, 
when Wall exclaimed aloud in order to impress his 
lordship—“My lord, I am Wall, the Chartist!” So 
far from stepping back in alarm, or hurrying from such 
an unseemly interruption, the accomplished man of the 
world immediately exclaimed—again holding out his 
hand with the utmost warmth—“Wall, I am very 
glad to see you. By-the-bye, Wall, what are the 
Chartists doing now ?” “ Besting upon their oars, my 

lord,” replied Wall in a consequential tone. “ Good'! 


A PLEASANT STORY OF THE LATE M.P. FOR SLIGO. 23 


good! a most wise course—a most wise course,” and 
with tire most genial of smiles the foremost man in 
Europe slipped into the House. After passing through 
the great hall you ascend a flight of steps and go 
through a passage adorned with the magnificent statues 
of the statesman of other ages. 

The two great Irish orators, Burke and Grattan, 
guard the entrance to this immortal galaxy of perished 
worthies. You then enter a circular hall, upon the 
right and left of which are the immediate entrances or 
vestibules to the Lords and Commons. They are 
adorned with fresco cartoons celebrating the great 
events of English history, such as the Execution of 
Montrose , Last Sleep of Argyle , Funeral of Charles I> 
The Seven Bishops after Trial receiving the Blessings of 
the People. The hall (which last you meet with out¬ 
side the doors of the House of Commons), was hut till 
recently open to all, but is now strictly exclusive. It 
used to be crowded by so many deputations waiting 
particularly on Metropolitan Members, so many touting 
parliamentary agents, so many importunate duns, and 
the whole Irish nation looking for Government situa¬ 
tions (every Irishman thinking that the Government 
has a right to provide for him and to spoon-feed him 
without any exertion on his part), that no one now, 
unless the officers of the House and the members, can 
enter into this inner lobby. 

It is in connection with this hall (called the “lobby”) 
that they tell a pleasant story of the late M.P. for 
Sligo. He had taken— “ his custom always of an after¬ 
noon”—some powerful potations of brandy, and falling 
soundly asleep in his seat in the House, was “left alone 
in his glory.” Awaking about two o’clock in the 
morning on 1 finding his dormitory more capacious and 
costly in its fittings than his back attic in St. James’s 



24 


LONDON IN THE SENATE-THE WHIP. 


Place, lie rushed out of the House into the lohhy, when 
two firemen immediately laid hold of the alarmed and 
half-sleeping M.P., and sternly demanded what brought 
him there. He good-humouredly answered, that that 
was what he wanted to ascertain himself, but of one 
thing the firemen might be certain, that he was not 
Guy Paux. The worthy guardians against combus¬ 
tibles (a necessary caution where Irish oratory prevails), 
assured the M.P. that he could not leave the House, 
so that he must rest contented until the morning. 

“Well then,” said the son of Erin, “by-, I will 

go hack into the House of Commons and sleep in the 
Speaker’s chair; far better than a police cell. Some 
people have a difficulty in getting into this House, my 
difficulty consists in getting out of it.” In this hall 
the messengers of the House sit waiting to be dis¬ 
patched either to Government offices for documents, or 
in the event of a division to hunt out for members. 
They are sometimes sent at midnight. When the 
“Whip” sent after an Irish M.P., Palmerston used to 
say, “You had better send a clean shirt, his patriotism 
makes up better than his linen.” The messengers have 
lost all faith in the purity of public men from seeing 
so much of the workings of the inner life of those to 
whose actions distance lends such an heroic form. 
They are permitted, sub rosa, to earn money at elec¬ 
tions. 

In this lobby too, dressed in faultless black, the 
“ Whip ” spends all his time, rarely entering the 
House, “buttonholding” every doubtful and recusant 
member preparatory to a division, and making as many 
promises within any given hour as would take him any 
given seven years to accomplish. The electric hell 
which rings to give notice of a division is the clearest 
toned, tinkling little bell I ever listened to. It rings 



AYES AND NOES-JOHN BRIGHT. 


25 


simultaneously in every department of the vast build¬ 
ing, and then comes a school-boy rush of the members 
who never heard o \g word of the debate, and knowing 
as much about the merits of the question upon which 
the division is about to take place as does the bell 
which has summoned them to vote. There are two 
lobbies behind the speaker’s chair, into which the 
Ayes and Noes enter, and sometimes very funny mis¬ 
takes occur through members going into the wrong 
lobby. Lord Palmerston had a curious habit of taking 
a note of the divisions upon a slip of paper at the table 
of the House, and it is alleged that in his library, after 
his death, thousands of those slips were found. When 
a popular speaker is upon his legs some one of the 
messengers makes the announcement in the dining¬ 
room., tea-room, smoking-room, etc.; but the only 
member that could keep the House during the dinner 
hour was John Bright. His silvery tones, genial aspect, 
unbroken eloquence, and powerful consecutive reason¬ 
ing, delighted even the bitterest opponents of the Great 
Tribune. The accommodation for strangers is ample, 
consisting of a gallery called the Strangers’ Gallery, to 
which you are admitted by a member’s order, and the 
Speaker’s Gallery (the better of the two) to which you 
are admitted by having your name entered upon the 
Speaker’s list. Great want of gallantry is displayed as 
far os the ladies are concerned, for they are perched up 
immediately over the Reporters’ Gallery, and merely 
can peep through antique gratings, whilst as to hearing 
it is almost out of the question. Distinguished persons, 
such as foreign ambassadors, judges, etc., are admitted 
to the floor of the House, below the bar, and on a level 
with the place allotted to peers. Some unseemly oc¬ 
currences take place in what is popularly called the 
People’s House, such as deep snoring, cock crowing, 


2(3 


LONDON IN COGERS’ HALL. 


and what old O’Connell used to call “beastly bellowing.” 
Upon the side galleries allotted to members, and looking 
immediately down upon the body of the House, are to be 
seen the outstretched forms of the yawning and skulk¬ 
ing M.Ps., who, in the recess, never fail to inform 
their constituents of “the anxious hours, both by day 
and night, which, during a Session of unexampled 
labour, they gloried to have spent in their honoured 
service.” 

During the recess the House is shown to strangers 
and the anxiety of country folk to know “ where their 
members sit ” is smiled at by any one of the messen¬ 
gers whose privilege it is to show the House. The 
House of Lords is fitted up in gorgeous splendour and 
is worthy of a visit for itself alone. In its sittings the 
greatest decorum prevails, and it no more resembles the 
Lower House than a drawing-room in Belgravia, with 
its noiseless civilization, does a turbulent garret in St. 
Giles’s or Whitechapel. As you enter it you can see 
the vast cartoon of Moses descending from the Mount, 
'the tall form seeming radiant with the immediate 
presence of the Godhead ! 


CHAPTER IY. 

LONDON IN COGERS’ HALL. 

Have any of our readers, during any portion of their 
lives, been honoured by the visit of a country cousin ? 
Wliat pleasing torments you undergo from his insatiable 
desire to see London from the tunnel up to the great 
national tomb at Westminster. Poor Theodore Hook 
used to tell a story of having undergone one of those 
terrible visitations, and how, having satisfied every 
feeling which either friendship or curiosity could exact, 




LONLiON IN OUGLilS HALI 






















































































































































28 LONDON IN COGERS’ HALL. 

and having taken leave of his Paul Pry friends, he 
flung himself upon his sofa, with the exclamation, 
“ Thank God, that’s over ! ” But it was not over, as 
it so occurred, for about 2 a.m. the old watchman (a 
perished race, whose corruption and imbecility receded 
before the warlike invasion of the “ blues ”) knocked at 
his hall door to inform him that his exploring friends 
wanted to see him at the watch-house, in order to bail 
them out on a charge of having created a drunken riot. 
Our country cousin did not end his Babylonian pilgrim¬ 
age so unworthily as the friends of the wittiest of 
Tories did ; but after a day’s visitation to places that we 
ourselves, after half a century’s residence in London 
never saw, asked us to accompany him to Cogers’ 
Hall. 

He could tell me infinitely more about the place 
than I could—viz., how the name was derived from the 
Latin word cogitare , to think, and how its origin, like 
the origin of a great many useful things in the world, 
was involved in mystery ; so that in the Cogers’ own 
room two different dates were assigned for its illustrious 
birth; what wit, and fun, and learning, and talk, 
far loftier than the pyramids, was to be found there 
with the best of what Irishmen call “ materials a 
courteous landlord, and a civil waiter who had grown 
into a politician from listening to the nightly debates, 
just as sponge-holders ultimately learn to be boxers 
themselves. All this information my country cousin 
had acquired from a gentleman who lived next door to 
me for twenty years, and with whom I solemnly 
declare, if on my dying bed, I never exchanged a word 
during my whole lifetime, so there was nothing for it 
but to put on my hat and coat and accompany my friend 
to the Cogers’, with the accompaniment of a keen east 
wind, my friend consoling me all the way by the 


THE INTELLECTUAL COMBATANTS. 


29 


pleasant assurance that he would have something to 
talk about on the long winter nights, when he returned 
to old Yorkshire. After many turnings and windings 
through devious paths we at length arrived at the new 
home of the Cogers (they had lately migrated from 
their old place in Shoe Lane, a temple of eloquence and 
thought, now levelled to the dust but for upwards of 
twenty years under the proprietorship of the esteemed 
and well-known Mr. Deputy Walter) in Salisbury 
Court, Fleet Street, the Barley Mow. We entered 
the room as a popular speaker had just concluded, 
and a burst of loud and continuous applause greeted 
the close of his oration. The room was rather a 
lengthened one well attended. The “ Bake’s Progress” 
adorned the walls, an instructive lesson to some 
of the too ardent and fiery spirits, who frequented 
that convivial senate house. The intellectual combat¬ 
ants sat in every portion of the room, and were all by ap¬ 
pearance well known to the frequenters of the hall. We 
found that the “ Questions ” generally submitted for 
discussion were the leading topics of the day, unless 
some cranky member was desirous of debating some 
favourite topic of his own, such as “ Should society be 
ruled by first principles ? ” “ Was Brutus justified in 

killing "Caesar ? ” “Will Odger put an end to the 
British Monarchy ? ” “ Is Free Trade a blessing, or 

a curse ? ” But whatever is discussed, no assemblage 
of men we observed could exhibit a finer spirit of fair 
play and toleration than this “ ancient Society of 
Cogers ” does. A perfect stranger gets the preference 
' to the most practised orator in the room. The speeches 
are all extempore, wherein they differ from collegiate 
debating societies, in which the speeches are written 
like themes, weeks before their delivery. We will 
not here enter into the long vexed question whether 


30 LONDON IN COGERs’ HALL-TIIE SPEAKERS. 

extemporaneous speaking tends ultimately to make a 
finished orator, or rather tends to the opposite effect. 
It gives, at least, confidence and fluency, two essential 
qualities for a public speaker. The true orator quickly 
rises above those elementary qualifications, whilst the 
mere talker never goes beyond them duiing the whole 
of his lengthened, dreary talking life. It is upon this 
latter class Mr. Carlyle wages such terrible war, because 
he knows that the noblest truths which have elevated 
mankind have been achieved by the tongue alone. 

In listening to the speeches delivered in the hall 
upon this my first visit, I was singularly struck with 
the rare ability displayed. I have frequented the 
gallery of the House of Commons for a series of years, 
and have heard speeches far inferior to those I heard 
delivered upon that night. The national characteristics 
predominated in all the speakers ; John Bull grappled 
with facts after his own salient and healthful fashion ; 
the Scotchman reasoned hard and closely, seasoning 
his discourse with Edinburgh metaphysics ; one Irish¬ 
man set the table in a roar with the richest humour 
and anecdote, whilst another from the Sister Isle 
passionately appealed to their imagination and their 
sympathies. The most healthy and cheerful good 
humour prevailed as each speaker alluded to his 
opponent’s idiosyncrasy without at all broadly reveal¬ 
ing it, but after the most approved fashion existing in 
a higher class of society. Hor were the countenances 
of the speakers unworthy of notice. An earnestness 
of expression marked the features of the scholar of 
the room. His diction was faultless, and his delivery 
was slow. The retired fox-hunter put forth the most 
original doctrines in political economy with the same 
daring look that he would at one time have faced 
the biggest fence in England. The well-informed 


LORD CLARENDON-THE EVENTS OF THE WEEK. 31 

Frenchman, who appeared to act as a kind of en¬ 
cyclopaedia to the room, looked as cynical as the philo¬ 
sopher of Ferney, whilst the features of one of the 
greatest favourites in the hall expressed a pleasant 
and joyous abandonment, accompanied by a thorough 
unbelief in all that surrounded him. The legend is 
that the hall is not unfrequently visited by persons of 
the highest political distinction, and that the late 
Lord Clarendon was one night detected amongst 
the auditors in Shoe Lane in the strictest incog. Doubt¬ 
less his lordship was led there by the desire of 
gleaning public opinion as to the Russian War, just 
commenced. The general audience is composed of 
the most respectable tradesmen, and the slightest 
allusion to anything in the political world is rapidly 
seized upon by them, showing them thoroughly con¬ 
versant with every current event. What a contrast 
to half a century ago! Upon this ground it is very 
difficult for a political novice to address the Cogers’ 
Hall; they will not listen to the enunciation of 
platitudes ; extreme views are only met with derision, 
and even when an old member of their own body 
indulges in “bunkum,” he is good humouredly laughed 
down. Saturday night—peculiarly a Cogers* night— 
is set aside for discussing, not one question, but all the 
remarkable events of the week. It is presided over by 
a gentleman rejoicing in the sounding title of Grand, 
and we learnt that the present Grand was a man of 
strong common sense, and thoroughly conversant with 
commercial matters. We left the hall as the brazen 
tongue of St. Bride’s tolled twelve, and I heartily 
thanked my country cousin for the intellectual treat he 
had afforded me. 



LONDON IN ROTTEN ROW. 


































































































































































































33 


CHAPTER Y. 

LONDON IN ROTTEN ROW. 

Rotten Row, the famous ride of the fashion and 
rank of London, the “ Ladies’ Mile,” the conventional 
resort of the elite of society and of the upper ten 
thousand, as also of their myriad foolish imitators. 
All—the spurious and original alike—are, however, 
content to come to the Row, and parade themselves and 
their horseflesh, at fixed and prescribed hours during 
each succeeding day of the cycle of the London season, 
if only for the sake of seeing, or being seen, by their 
equals or their inferiors, and to furnish, each in his or 
her own person, one of the motley actors in this galanty- 
show of fashionable life. The Season is usually marked 
by the duration of the session of Parliament; in a 
secondary degree, by the performances of the Italian 
Opera; and lastly, not leastly, by the presumed pre¬ 
sence of the court and Royal Lamily in London, 
when levees and drawing-rooms are the order of the 
day. 

But we will now rest on the iron bars that separate 
the side walks from the spongy earthen course, and 
survey the groups of riders, both male and female, 
who have turned out to amuse us, or to indulge in 
their evening exercise, which, with the majority, must 
not he neglected for their very fives—at a fashionable 
valuation. They are bound to attend regularly here, 
by the laws of the society they belong to, and at eleven 
in the morning and four in the afternoon, must all the 
assumed followers of fashion present themselves in the 
Row of Rotten—rotten, indeed ! for the word but too 
truly applies, so far as character is concerned, to some 

c 


?A ROTTEN ROW-TIIE HONORABLE MRS. W. 


whom we may remark here. Note yonder horsewoman, 
whose easy seat and brazen look comport so strangely 
with her light and graceful figure. Wearing a brown 
Spanish hat, with a single curling cock’s feather 
therein, she bends forward with graceful assurance, 
over the curved and flowing mane of her small iron 
grey Arab, and giving the handsome creature the rein, 
swims rather than canters over the soft and yielding 
soil. Some noble ladv, think vou. Not in the least, 
neighbour of mine, for all she may look, as she does, 
a youthful queen in form and face. Still, she must be 
of some consequence, say you ; for see how the cavaliers 
and the gentlemen on foot, either doff their hats to 
their very knees, or kiss the tips of their fingers and 
the ends of their canes, and gaze after her with pleased 
and smiling looks as she glides by. The other ladies 
on horseback; note them! see how they glance 
furtively, but yet enviously, at their fairer and more 
favored sister, as she, shaking her rich golden locks, 
and winking and blinking cheery smiles on all, dis¬ 
closing in the act white pearly teeth between two full 
rosy lips, leaves behind her the numerous salutes, and 
dashes gaily along the course, unattended by the usual 
mounted groom, who in almost every other case is 
following his master or mistress here. The ecuyere 
disappears amongst the crowd of horse. The Honorable 

Mrs. W- Who is she ? I wall inform you.— 

Presumably a lone and pretty widow, but really and 
truly once better known, and that but recently, as 
Kate, the smart and saucy barmaid at the Devil 
Tavern, in the Tlaymarket, the toast and favorite of 
every cheque-robbing clerk and fashionable demirep in 
that bacchanal district. IIow came she to be riding in 
Rotten Row as we see her now ? Ilow is it we hear 
of her sitting in opera boxes, not to speak of joining 



THE FAIR DAUGHTERS OF ALBION RIDE WELL. 35 

jolly dinner parties at Richmond and elsewhere, and 
posting down to Ascot and the Derby P If you will 
know, my friend, ask yonder cavalier, that tall, slim, 
light-haired man of thirty years or so, who comes riding 
along, stiffly and coldly, with military seat and sneering 
look;—ask him, the notorious Jack Longspur, Captain 
in the Royal Horse Guards Black, and he will be able to 
enlighten you. But she has gone; and now let us contem¬ 
plate her sisters in company ; sisters haply less frail and 
certainly in many cases less fair, and assuredly less 
attractive in the engaging abandon of demeanour and 
look of the suppositious widow. Look well at them; 
these damsels will bear your inspection nobly, and like 
the wondering and enraptured foreigner at your side, 
of whom there are many here, confess to the puissant 
charms of the maids of merry England, the sober, 
diffident, blue and grey-eyed beauties, who bear the 
national blazon and colour of the bonny red rose on 
their fair peach-rounded cheeks, and sit their mettlesome 
steeds like statuesque graces in the sombre-hued robes, 
that confine, without concealing, their elegantot forms 
and figures. Not even their ugly chimney-pot hats, 
perched on masses of luxuriant hair, fail to detract 
from the almost universal beauty of face enhanced by 
winning smile, and the grace of manners and bearing 
amongst them. They ride well, these fair daughters of 
Albion, and with all the consummate ease and skill of 
the high school of equitation. Mark well the nymphs 
as they stream past in twos or threes together, escorted 
either by staid papa, or jealously watchful brother or 
friend; and see them also ambling along in company 
with the proud mother, mounted, as her daughter, at 
whom the parent glances ever and anon with pardonable 
vanity, seeing perchance in the maid the reflection, as 
it were, of herself, in the glass of memory, by the light 


36 ROTTEN ROW-COMMOTION DOWN THE RIDE. 

of other days. Acknowledge, my master, whilst in¬ 
voluntarily you raise your head-covering in duty and 
respect to the sex, that there exists not a clime or 
nation on which the sun may shine, that can produce 
so peerless a beauty, so fair an object of nature’s 
handiwork in the feminine form, as the really young 
and pretty English girl. 

But here’s another—guy! as the rude boys would say 
—a lady, but by no means young, whose sharp cut 
features and thin scanty locks with the visible streaks of 
the silver warning threads of time, and whose angular 
proportions of shoulder and elbow bespeak advancing 
years, but who manages her horse nevertheless, with 
skill and boldness. Her attire of almost juvenile 
fashion and cut, and her little hat and veil ape the 
costume of the younger and more presentable repre¬ 
sentatives of her sex. Dear elderly body ; she fancies 
herself yet young and engaging, and smirks and nods 
with affected charm, to greet a passing friend or ac¬ 
quaintance, and seems determined not to lightly strike 
her colours—she paints—to the attack of three-score 
years and more. She is very pleased with herself, if 
her much wrinkled face can be accepted as an index, 
but her companion, an equally elderly gentleman— 
her husband surely, with an attendant groom as old as 
either of them—seems not so well contented, as attired 
in blue coat and brass buttons with trousers and vest of 
drab, and wearing a wide brimmed hat, he sits stiffly 
and primly on his stout grey cob and jogs past in 
company, the pair becoming also merged in the shoal 
of equestrians. 

But what is this commotion down the ride ? Some¬ 
thing extraordinary has occurred, for the different 
groups of horse break up, divide and range themselves 
in a lane, whilst two or three dogs racing and yelping 


THE GALLOPING SNOB-FURIOUS RIDING. 3' 

as for life, tear down the quickly formed opening, and 
here he comes :—the wild horseman !—a hobbledehoy 
creature, half man half boy, a hybrid partaking of 
neither age, to whom some greedy liveryman has 
entrusted a horse, rides furiously past in a mad gallop. 
—His coat flies open to the winds, his hat secured by 
a string to his collar, dangles behind him, his legs, with 
the trousers worked up to the knees and showing dirty 
stockings, are stretched at an angle from his courser’s 
sides, whilst his toes are pointed fair abroad like the 
run-out guns of a heavy frigate, as the being, panting 
and breathless, works furiously up and down on the 
saddle, and flies away in a cloud of dust on the tall 
wine merchant’s horse that carries him. The mounted 
observers look and laugh, the promenaders stare 
curiously after the runaway, as if it was an apparition 
—and such it is—of flesh and blood, an apparition 
that appears at intervals.—One of the sights of London 
—the galloping snob of Rotten Row ! 

The rider cannot complain of want of notice, and 
fast on his track is a shadow that will leave him not, a 
pursuing vengeance—for the breach of equestrian de¬ 
corum and police regulations—in the shape of a mounted 
policeman, who is riding him down for capture. It is 
ten to one on helmet and blue coat for the race, as the 
guardian of law and order dashes after the “ snob” on 
a swift and powerful charger, whose long steady stride 
must soon overtake the truant wine horse, consigning 
it to the greenyard, and its rider to the nearest police 
station ; and to-morrow morning, the hire of a horse 
for a ride in the “ Row,” will be supplemented to the 
cockney cavalier by a fine and a caution for furious 
riding, from the nearest sitting magistrate. 

These are some of the ordinary characters that fre¬ 
quent the Row, but now and again the loyal sight- 


38 PETTICOAT LANE-PORTLY CITIZENS OF THE EAST. 

seers are rewarded with a glimpse at the younger 
members of the Royal Family who join the throng. 
The heir apparent and his brothers here take their 
constitutional airing on horseback at times, and in the 
adjacent carriage drive, in the endless string of vehicles 
of all descriptions that follow each other in slow inter¬ 
mission, the fair young Danish wife of the Prince of 
Wales is no less often seen, with others of the royal 
and aristocratic members of society, and many com¬ 
moners, respiring alike the evening breezes in this 
magnificent park. 

But come, my friend, we have seen Rotten Row in 
all its glory, and gazed our fill upon all the notabilities 
of state, the arbiters of rank and fashion, the select 
of society, the aspiring gentility, and unblushing vice 
that here find their exponents, wise, foolish or depraved 
alike, so let us betake ourselves to fresh fields and 
pastures new, in roaming through the wide and pleasant 
glades of Kensington Gardens, before we return to 
London and its noisy teeming streets. 


CHAPTER VI. 

PETTICOAT LANE. 

In the unknown regions of the metropolis there is a 
nomadic race which daily carries on its predatory 
operations in the streets, and nightly disappears in 
quarters wholly unvisited as well by the portly citizens 
of the East as by the perfumed whiskerandoes of the 
West-end—a large class more degraded than the 
savages of New Zealand, the blacks of the Great 
Karoo, or the insular communities of the Pacific. As 
unsettled and uncivilized as the Bushmen and Tonquas 
of the Hottentot race, ^he Fingoes or the savages of New 



lonuon in petticoat lane. (see page 42 ) 



















































































































































40 PETTICOAT LANE—SUNDAY MORNING MART. 

Holland, are the street folk of London, the sellers and 
buyers, the finders and performers, the artists and 
showmen, the artificers and labourers. 

These individuals who gain a livelihood solely in the 
streets, and whose takings amount yearly to two 
millions and a half pounds sterling, form a fortieth 
part of the inhabitants of London, being upwards 
of seventy thousand in number. These men and 
women in their growth from childhood to maturity 
never knew what play was; never enjoyed a gambol in 
the fields; never breathed one breeze of the country 
air: children that passed from the helplessness of 
infancy to the self-dependence of adult life, and were 
taught to labour almost as soon as they left the 
mother’s breast. 

In a separate chapter we have treated of that isolated 
class of the street folk, the costermongers, who clamour 
for business mightily on those two grand occasions of 
theirs, Saturday night and Sunday morning, in their 
street-marts—ten on the Surrey, and twenty-seven on 
the Middlesex side of the Thames. 

Perhaps among costermongers might be included 
that numerous and peculiar class, the street Irish, 
numbering about ten thousand, the women among 
whom deal chiefly in flowers and lavender, watercresses 
and chickweed, and dispose in the course of the year of 
about two million roses—a flower that is as great a 
favorite with the poor as the rich. 

London has its street literature, with its street pub¬ 
lishers, authors and salesmen, who sell songs by the 
yard, and standard songs too,—“ I dreamt that I dwelt 
in marble halls,” “ I’ve been roaming,” “ There’s a 
good time coming, boys,” and “ The Pope he leads a 
happy life.” They take advantage of every murder, 
and sometimes kill somebody for the occasion; burn 


BEER SHOPS IN LOW LOCALITIES. 


41 


down famous buildings by tlie score, such as Edinburgh 
Castle and Canterbury Cathedral, Holyrood House and 
Hampton Court; but these conflagrations are not sale¬ 
able, except the reflection of a fire is seen. 

Those who perambulate the streets selling religious 
tracts, are Hindoos, Negroes, or Malays from the 
Indian Archipelago. The patterers and tramps who 
vend political litanies and catechisms are genuine 
Londoners; they are to be found in considerable 
abundance at all the Sunday Revolutionary and 
Republican meetings in Trafalgar Square and Hyde 
Park. 

There is also the “Fine Arts” of the streets, repre¬ 
sented by the stenographic card-seller ; and the music 
supplied chiefly by Italian organ-grinders, German 
horn-bands, and nigger songsters. Then there are 
the professional beggars, who do as thriving a trade as 
any; enliven their leisure hours with gambling and 
skittles, frequent such places of resort as beershops in 
low localities, and “ trip it on the light fantastic toe,” 
at “ twopenny hops,” or cheap dances, three times a 
week at least. 

Now and then a missionary descends, as it were, 
from an upper world to teach these poor wanderers, 
and though not more than one in ten is able to read, 
they are eager to learn and grateful to those who come 
among them in a philanthropic spirit, mingling care for 
their present welfare with solicitude for their moral 
elevation. 

Among this itinerant multitude, though characterised, 
it must be admitted, as a general rule, by a greater 
development of the animal than the intellectual or 
moral nature, there occur occasionally precious senti¬ 
ments of human nature—girls working themselves 
blind to support their parents; paralyzed old men 


42 PETTICOAT LANE, MINORIES, WHITECHAPEL. 

dragging themselves through, the streets to maintain 
their bed-ridden wive*:; orphan sisters labouring day 
and night to provide food for their younger brothers, 
and many of them, in spite of constant and great 
temptations, preserving themselves in modesty and 
virtue. 

It may sound startling, but it is, nevertheless, true, 
that three consecutive wet days will bring to the brink 
of starvation the greater part of thirty thousand people. 
Where the means of life are so precarious, the terrors 
of sickness are quite alarming; but the prosperous 
relieve the needy by raffles and other devices. 

To this phase of the revelations of London belongs 
naturally the following picture :— 

On Sunday, when the other streets of the metropolis 
are hushed, when business is suspended, and when all 
persons are hurrying, dressed in their best, to church, 
the neighbourhoods of the Minories and Whitechapel, 
are alive, during the hours of divine service, with 
bustling, shouting mobs. Here hardly any signs of the 
Lord’s Hay appear, save the ringing of church bells, 
and these are scarcely audible amidst the din of the 
noisy multitude. 

Not farther than a stone’s throw from Aldgate 
Church, on the left hand side, is a narrow alley 
which public documents and Home Secretaries know 
as Middlesex Street, but which the street folk of 
London and the inhabitants of the place itself call 
Petticoat Lane. Whether it has derived this title 
from the numerous articles of wearing apparel sus- 
pb»ded from the windows, which the chance passenger 
encounters in his progress up the “Lane,” it is difficult 
to say; but one thing is positive, the name is appro¬ 
priate to the locality. 

The race which is in the ascendancy here is that of 


EVERY ARTICLE TO RE BOUGHT “ DIRT CHEAP.” 43 

the tribe of Israel, all of whom have one firm and 
fixed idea—making money as fast as possible, and 
obtaining as much as can be got. The male section 
exhibits every variety of the genus homo —long and 
short, lean and stout, oily and dry, dirty and clean ; 
and the soft daughters of Eve may be divided into two 
classes, the young and fair, and the fat and forty. 

The people are huddled together as close as a flock of 
sheep, and the sellers are commending their wares with 
a noise more deafening than the rumble of vehicles in 
the High Street. Fortunate they, among the throng- 
pressing up the gradually widening “ Lane,” who escape 
the importunities of some of the vendors, who invite 
passengers to buy every variety of article “dirt cheap,” 
from a gold watch to a second-hand pair of boots. 

Here is a bumpkin, fresh from Romford, who has 
“ com’ up to Lunnun to buy a gold ring for Sal.” He 
has just given for a bit of u Brummagem ” rubbish as 
many shillings as it is worth farthings. He will return 
home wiser than an Essex calf. Here, too, is an honest 
Jack Tar, fresh from the sea, and as green as the briny 
deep. A pert Jewish minx ogles him as he is parting 
with more money than he should for an article in the 
stock of a wily-looking Jew. Poor Jack is not proof 
against those killing glances ; he asks the charmer to 
have a glass of ale, and, at two o’clock in the morning, 
finds himself lying helpless in the gutter, robbed of 
his year’s pay, and not even enough left to meet the 
fine at the police court, where the next morning he 
appears, penitent and dejected. Here is a young clerk 
from the city, bargaining for a new coat; when the 
foolish youth congratulates himself that he has taken 
in the dealer, he has paid double the value for the 
article he has purchased. Here is a middle-aged Jew 
selling oranges. One of his own tribe, a grinning lad 


44 LONDON VOLUNTEERS-GREAT NATIONAL FORCE. 

of some twelve years, is trying his acute abilities by 
depriving him of some of bis golden fruit. 

Suspended on old brooms, from first floor windows, 
what are here called “ kicksies,” or trousers, are being 
aired. Lining the entire kerbstone, are second-hand 
boots, in such quantities that it is surprising where they 
can come from. Fat old women and dirty youths call 
out the prices, and invite customers to “ buy, and 
they’ll be sure to come again.” 

Thus the endless panorama passes before the eyes of 
the visitor to these regions of the great City, seldom 
or never explored, except by street folk and the poorest 
of the poor. 


CHAPTER VII. 

LONDON VOLUNTEERS AND SPORTS. 

London has no more brilliant sight than her volun¬ 
teers, as, with high carriage and steady footsteps, they 
march through those streets that they would defend 
with the last drop of their blood. If Napoleon the 
Great could look out of the grave, he would form a 
different estimate of our military ability to what he 
did. This great national force seems to have sprung 
from out the earth, its formation was so rapid. There 
were grave doubts, at first, whether it would succeed 
or continue its popularity; but all those doubts are 
at an end, for the volunteers have proved themselves 
fully equal to the regular line in every quality of 
soldiership, whilst their popularity daily increases. 

The militia, in days gone by, used to be laughed at; 
but the great Duke said he was more indebted for his 
victories to the militia force than any other body in the 
service. So our volunteers to-morrow, if necessity 



OUR LONDON VOLUNTEERS 


45 



required it, would prove their power against any foreign 
foe. It, moreover, taught all our young to walk, an 
accomplishment at one time possessed by few in England. 

































































































46 


LONDON VOLUNTEERS—LONDON SPORTS. 


Their military bands have reached to the highest 
perfection, and, as they play through our thronged 
thoroughfares, few windows are left unoccupied by the 
fair sex, who ever delight to honour the brave. Some 
men, advanced in life and not of the most romantic 
form, by joining the force, create some laughter 
amongst the unthinking ; but we honour the patriotism 
which neither grey hairs nor obesity can militate 
against. Our lives upon it, they would stand their 
ground as well as any amongst our modern Romeos. 
We subjoin a sketch which speaks for itself, and gives 
the two opposite specimens. 

London Sports. —There is nothing in which a greater 
or more visible improvement has taken place than in 
our sports. The prize-ring and the bear-garden, dog¬ 
fighting and rat-killing are things of the past; but 
our glorious boat races, in which we are the first in the 
world; cricket, in which we have no rivals; and 
athletic sports—running, jumping the hurdles—in 
which we have reached to the highest perfection. The 
Luke attributed a great deal of his success in war to 
the athletic exercises which Englishmen had acquired 
in peace. The steady nerve, quick eye, and command 
of every muscle, exercised considerable power in the 
battle-field. On the Continent those games are almost 
unknown, and the biggest Frenchman or Prussian is 
the veriest baby in the hands of an Englishman in any 
physical display. We attribute a good deal of the 
temperance which characterises this age of ours to the 
growth of those sports, for the intemperate man, 
shattered in nerves and dim of eye, has no chance in 
our noble pastimes. Curiously enough, too, the 
“ Cockney,” who lives, as Cowper sings, in “ pent-up 
city.” excels in all those games, and they who come 
from “ fresh fields and pastures new ” can rarely hold 


THE OPERA WITH ITS GALAXY OF BEAUTY. 47 


their own with him. The Londoner’s pardonable 
vanity goes a good way in sustaining him in those 
contests, and he does it because he thinks he ought to 
do it. It is unnecessary to say that athletic games 
strengthen and purify. Watts, the author of the 
ITymn Book, was the best howler of his day, and 
established a bowling ground in his parish. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

LONDON HIGH LIFE. 

The London Season. — What brilliant thoughts, 
what gorgeous images of fleeting splendour, what 
rounds of gaiety, what lofty names, and the sweet 
faces of our English women do these three single 
words create. The fierce debate; the opera with its 
galaxy of beauty, which looks as if some of the stray 
ones of heaven had alighted upon this earth; the 
drawing-rooms of a Sovereign, whose reign in the 
mighty social revolutions it has witnessed, casts into 
the shade the stern splendours of Elizabeth or the 
milder glories of the placid Anne. Wits and beauties, 
painters and poets, philosophers scholars and statesmen, 
are all summoned to mind by the assemblage which 
during the “London Season” distinguishes the most 
splendid of capitals. At the call of “the season” 
the best and wisest Englishmen from many quarters here 
assemble—men who have thrilled great assemblies by 
their reason and eloquence, whose deeds a grateful 
nation wall not let die, and beauties that have put life 
into the canvass, and gave the glories of life to the 
coldest marble. Nor are they the mere passing birds 
of splendid plumage who assemble in London at 



48 LONDON HIGH LIFE-“ BELLE ” OF THE SEASON. 


the season. We wish some of our readers could see 
their library shelves loaded with the rare learning 
of many lands and many ages—could listen to their 
masterly criticisms upon the last debate, last comedy, 
last painting, and the still larger question of the state 
of the nation. They then would no longer be led by 
those who endeavour to stifle that time-honoured res¬ 
pect which England in all ages has entertained for 
her ancient nobility. The leaf begins to wear a browner 
tinge—the fresh glory of spring is gone—the princely 
mansions are closed—the knocker no longer resounds, 
and the powdered, richly liveried menial, stripped of 
all his splendour, descends the area steps with his 
homely pot of beer. The observed of all London for 
months are gone to their old halls and castles that 
sleep so tranquilly amidst the sombre woods, but many 
of which contain a history in every stone. The great 
lord has commenced his home administrative duty, and 
the “belle” of the season has put on her careless hat 
and strong boots to visit old Margaret in the village 
and administered to her little wants. Ah ! it is a splendid 
well-balanced system—all that is. The golden evening 
—after the glaring day. Countries that do not enjoy it 
languish and die, or are torn by the fangs of revolu¬ 
tion. Nor is the “season” confined to the titled ones 
alone in our present age. That great and successful 
class, entitled “the merchant princes of England,” 
enjoy the “season” fully as well as the Howards 
and the Stanleys do. Those pioneers of enterprise and 
wealth no longer dwell as of old in the dingy ill-lighted 
courts and lanes of the City proper—pouring over their 
ledgers all day, and awoke “in the dead waste and 
middle of the night” from dreams of “Whittington 
and his Cat” by the mournful and protracted call of the 
watchman. They have migrated through the wonderful 


THE LONDON SEASON-LONDON FASHIONS. 49 

power of steam to magnificent country mansions, and 
mingled their racy purple blood with the “blue blood” 
of England. They form no inconsiderable portion of 
that vast and unrivalled assemblage which arises at the 
sound of the National Anthem on the first night of the 
opera—a sight once seen never to be forgotten, and 
which no other country in Christendom, save “dear 
old England ” could exhibit. In the London season 
the hard-working artizan takes wife and children to 
the Parks to see earth’s rulers—whilst the gaping 
rustic dreams a second heaven has opened to his un¬ 
tutored vision. The London season sends the life¬ 
blood rushing through every artery of trade, and makes 
glad many a home. That giant of modern growth— 
the London Press—amidst leading articles, foreign and 
domestic correspondence, criticisms, biographies, acci¬ 
dents, calamities or offences, still finds a liberal space to 
record the deeds of the London season. How many 
happy “ unions ” then take place, not confined to the 
“upper ten thousand;” for old St. Clement’s sends 
forth its merry chimes, unmoved by the wide gap of 
desolation by which it is surrounded, as cheerfully as 
Hanover Church or St. George’s. The drag, the cab 
—the tidy going emblem of English respectability— 
and costermongers’ carts bring down the “ London 
season” to the sweet shades of Epping Forest or the 
tranquil waters of the old Welsh Harp, at Hendon. 
The shop windows clothe themselves as gaily as the 
forest oak, and the sad “winter of discontent” seems 
to have left the earth for ever. The relationship of all 
classes towards one another is more closely drawn to¬ 
gether during the season than at any other time, and 
the philosophy of mutual dependence is put into hal¬ 
lowed action. 

London Fashions. —An Italian fool, parading the 

D 


50 LONDON HIGH LIFE-THE LADIES OF LuNDON. 

streets naked, carrying a piece of cloth on his shoulders, 
was asked by some person why he did not dress himself, 
since he had the material. “Because,” replied he, “I 
wait to see in what way the fashion will end. I do not 
like to use my cloth for a dress, which, in a little time, 
will be of no use to me, on account of some new 
fashion.” What was then told as a fool’s reply, might 
now pass as the result of the mature reflection of a 
man of sense. Shoemakers in London offer their fair 
customers the choice of hoots with equally high heels 
for each foot, or the far more charming variety of a 
high heel for one foot and a low heel for the other, 
causing the wearer to halt in a way supposed to be 
imitative of Royalty. And after this, Frenchmen and 
Americans will say we are not a courtly people. What 
small remnant of humanity will there be left, “ to sink 
or swell as nature pleases” when fashion has completed 
its conquests? Fashion is a strange thing, and doesn’t 
change any the faster, but, indeed, sometimes lasts the 
longer, by reason of being ugly and offensive. Fashion 
is the most irresistible of all forces, it is stronger even 
than religion. It is also the most unaccountable of all 
forces. You can seldom trace its origin, you can never 
calculate its duration. Fashion, as an application of 
art to social life, would doubtless be an excellent thing, 
if people of artistic capacity would condescend to lead 
the fashion ! If only a lady who united high birth, 
and intellect, and a cultivated taste for the beautiful, 
would take this matter in hand, what a multitude of 
monstrosities we might be spared. One we may be 
permitted to mention, that of the ladies of London 
going so naked to the Opera, etc.; although, perhaps, 
we ought to suppose it is emblematic of their innocence, 
for T. Dibdin says :— 


FASHIONABLE GIRLS-YOUNG MEN OF LONDON. 51 


“ Fashion was formed when the world began, 

And Adam, I’m told, was a very smart man. 

As for Eve, we can say neither more or less, 

But that ladies of fashion all copy her dress; 

So, barring all pother of this, that, or t’other, 

We all follow fashion in turn of each other.” 

The Fashionable Girls of London. —Clara: “ Bella, 
dear, what do you think of young Sniggings, the fellow 
I have just been dancing with ?” Bella: “ Well, to tell 
the truth, love, I think he’s the most awfully stupid 
looking creature I ever saw.” Clara: “Well, he’ll have 
six hundred thousand when his father dies, and he’s in 
dreadful health.” Bella: “What of that ? Well, now 
I come to notice him, he really does seem interesting. 
Introduce me, my dear—and really—what lovely eyes 
he has !” 

The Affected London Miss loves the ble-ue ske-iy 
and her bootie little doggie and birdie, and delights in 
being key-ind to the poor, and thinks Miss So-and-so 
looked “ sweetly pretty ” at church in her new bonnet. 

The London Exquisite talks of taking—aw—his 
afternoon’s wide—aw—in Wotton Wo—aw—aw—or 
of going to the Opewaw—or else of wunning down— 
aw—to the Waces—aw—aw. 

The London Young Man positively must speak to 
the governor, and get the old boy to fork out some more 
tin ; for, positively, he can hardly afford himself a weed 
of an evening. Besides, he wants a more nobby crib, 
as the one he hangs out in now is only fit for some 
pleb or cad. It really isn’t the Stilton. 

Men and Women of Fashion in London have 
raised themselves to a level with their coachmen. 
Driving is now so essential a branch of elegant educa¬ 
tion, that ladies and their grooms have a most engaging 
effect in the crowded streets of London. 

d 2 


52 


CHAPTER IX. 

LONDON LOW LIFE. 

London Costermonger. —The undying coster is a 
rara avis, though, certainly not quite so scarce as a 
“black swan.” He is to be discovered mostly at the 
East-end of the metropolis; and is, in such locale, not 
obtrusive in his habitation, chiefly affecting the hack 
streets, courts, and alleys of the metropolis, and those 
in the most obscure districts. It is a singular fact that 
old costers are rare, the present multitude—thirty or 
forty thousand—are chiefly young and robust men, lads 
of from sixteen to seventeen, and hearty, strong “John 
Bulls” under thirty. After those years the coster is 
supposed to retire from business to a willci on the 
Thames, take a public by the “ vaterside,” or become 
one of the fancy. Their manners are free and easy to 
a fault, and, upon any public gathering, they will 
address my Lord Marquis, or my Right Honourable 
Lady, as freely as they would bandy words with their 
own tribe. Their modes of locomotion are peculiar. 
Donkeys are made especially for them, and the bull¬ 
dog is moulded to their will. They mostly marry young, 
for seldom on the Derby visit, or visits to any other 
fashionable al fresco entertainment, do we see John 
Coster, Esq., without his missus—sometimes a lovable 
and trusting thing of sweet seventeen, and, at other 
times, blooming matrons with their charming daughters 
(future coster wives) by his side. The dress of these 
remarkable fish and fruit vendors is singular; spring 
and summer the same fashions are adopted, by the 
gentlemen especially, and the unvarying heavy cravat 
wound round their throats in all seasons is a silent 
warning to those who change their heated garments in 



THE LONDON COSTERMONGER OUT FOR THE DAY. 











































































































































































































































54 LOW LIFE—THE COSTER ROMEO WITH HIS JULIET. 

all seasons. The feminine costers are, as a rule, very 
smart, and one remarkable feature of their equipment 
is, that they all wear strong serviceable hoots; they 
affect colors, and their many-tinted decorations float 
gaudily about them. The fashion in shawls is peculiar, 
generally passed round the waist, and tied in an elegant 
bow at the back—thus, most certainly, giving the first 
suggestion of the panier now worn as an elegant town 
costume. The matron is particularly stern, and pro¬ 
verbially stout, not to say “fat” Her bonnet strings 
are excessive, and her gowns apparently of a patch- 
work character. The coster wife and family, or coster 
Borneo with his Juliet, coster widower, or coster bache¬ 
lor ; in fact, costers of all grades—high, low, big, and 
little, proprietor of a donkey, or the proud possessor of 
a wan , are all peculiar and distinct from other races. 
These knights of the harrow—in the lauguage of the 
fraternity—often boast that if one “ pulls up his boot,” 
he can “ make up his leg ” by going to market early, 
and “knock in” his “ten or twelve hog afore break¬ 
fast,” while the shopkeeper is in bed. What the horse 
is to the predatory Arab, the donkey is to the coster¬ 
monger— his all-in-all. The “ coster ” would sooner 
sell his wife in Smithfield, if the law would permit, 
than “ swap ” his “ moke ” at the cattle market. They 
often realise more profit on “fish” than on “green 
stuff.” With a little stock-money they can go to 
Billingsgate, buy up a lot of whitings or fresh herrings 
in the morning, and convert them into “dried Finnin 
haddocks,” or “real Yarmouth bloaters,” by dinner¬ 
time in a shed or cellar by a process only known to 
themselves. As a rule, the thrifty costermonger would 
sooner break into the Stock Exchange than break into 
his “ stock-money.” It is a mistake to suppose that he 
is addicted to gin drinking; his favourite beverage is a 


YOU SEE I LIKES TO HUMOUR SARER. 


55 


“pot o’ four arf,” or “drop o’ cooper,” between him 
and his Neddy, which the donkey is seldom “ ass ” 
enough to refuse The coster slang consists in pronounc¬ 
ing each word as if it were spelt backwards. One may 
say to another, “Will you do a top fo reeb” (pot of 
beer). “It’s ‘on doog, on doog’ (no good, no good). 
I’ve had a regular “tros-dab” (bad sort ) to day. I’ve 
been doing awful “ dab ” (bad) with my “ tol ” (tot) 
or stock, lia’nt made a “yennep” (penny). The other 
may reply, “Why, I’ve cleared a ‘Hatch-enore’ (half- 
a-crown) a’ready, but “kool esilop ” (look at the police), 
“namrnus” (be off), I’m going to do a “tightner” 
(have my dinner). His pride is excessive in his holi¬ 
day hours. We’ll, therefore, introduce a couple of our 
friends, Bill Sniggers and Bob Simmons, who, in their 
gaudiest Sunday trim, are out on a trip to Epsom, 
like faithful spouses, each with his wife in the drag. 
“ Now, Bob, answer me this here,” says Bill Sniggers, 
“ what do you think o’ me, eh ? The barrer’s a smart 
turn out, isn’t it ? ‘ neat, but not gaudy,’ as the old 
gen’leman remarked when he painted his tail pea-green ; 
cheerful without being howdacious. Four isn’t squeeged 
for room, you see. And Mrs. Simmons, I hobserve, has 
planted her silf-like figure naterally at the back of the 
weliikel; she is a nounce or two heavier than a hinfant, 
it’s true. And then, look at my wife, Mrs. Sniggers, 

‘ grease in all her movements, in all her hactions dignity 
and love,’ as the poet wrote in compliment of my chice. 
She shines like the polish on the barrer, don’t she, Bob? 
You see, I likes to humour Sarer, and ven she says, 
‘Bill,’ says she, ‘it isn’t pump and wanity to have the 
carrige painted yallcr, and picked in with red and 
green, is it ?’ And I said, ‘ Lor bless your pretty 
pimples, says I, not a bit on it.’ You see, old pal, Sarer 
was bent on doing the extensive, and having everything 


56 LONDON LOW LIFE-THE HANIMULE ANIMATED. 

to match her shawl and bonnet, and, as she innersently 
remarked, ‘ Ye don’t slaughter the fatted hanimal every 
blessed day,’ vich so touched me, Bill, that I vent in a 
buster and had the wehikel polished up to its present 
high state of illuminating powers.” The donkey, ani¬ 
mated by the best blood of his tribe, flies past many of 
the swell turns-out, and the quartette are fairly on the 
road to Epsom. “Now then, Simmons,” says Bill, 
“ vere’s your hadmiration of the hanimule ?” “ I vos 

admiring the hanimule, Bill, but I don’t vont to make 
any personal hobservations vile there’s a hole ’bus full 
of swells coming alongside on us.” “ You’re a nice 
young man, you are, not to know how to speak afore 
your infeariors!” “ Betsy Simmons, you’re a pump !” 

“ Pump !” says Mrs. Simmons. “ Simmons, keep 
kriet!” says Sniggers, “ you’re the noisiest warmint 
I ever druv in this here fashionable trap, and, if you 
don’t mind your eye, I’ll pitch you over.” The parasol 
descends sharply on Bill’s head. The hat falls and 
converts his yard of clay into a short dudheen. “Simmons, 
hoy,” says Mrs. S., “keep up the gentility of the 
thing, else vot’s the use of my fancy hat and parasole, 
and costume dress of orange and blue. Yot’s the use of 
your nobby hat, and that ere music hall coat and red 
tie, if you ain’t gin -teal with it. Oh, my eye, Bill, 
look here. Bless’d if there ain’t Jack Dodger and his 
missus done up in vite muslin, with black hart cherries 
printed all over her. My vig and viskers, ain’t he 
volloping the donkey ! Now then, put on the tellegraff 
and pass him as hif you wos a Prince of Whales.” 
“ Hullo, Yitecliapel, how are you, Dodgers P Yell, 
I’m blow’d if he ain’t gone slap into the ditch, vich 
vill take all the starch and cherries out o’ his mis¬ 
suses muslin. Now then, my noble Lord Yilliam, 
look vere you’re driving, vill yer ? Yell, I’m blessed if 


IN COURSE. HOW FAR ARE YE FROM YITECHAPEL. 57 

my lord ain’t screwed already, and all the lot, too. Ox¬ 
ford students, I guess, by the paper garlands round their 
hats, and horsehair moustaches and jolly noses. Mrs. 
Podger, vere’s the wittles ? Oh, isn’t she von for cram¬ 
ming herself; blessed if she ain’t a regular feather bed 
vot’ll alvays hold more. My eyes, ain’t there lots on the 
road. Harf a pint at the next public ? In course. How 
far are ve from Vitechapel ? Yy dont you count the mile¬ 
stones ? Twelve and a arf, to be sure ; Epsom in about 
a nour. Push on, Rover. Yy don’t you tell the moke 
there’s no peck till he gets to the downs ? Hurrah 
there, another smash. Don’t distress yourselves, ladies 
and gentlemen, ve’ll give you a lift if you’ll stay there 
till ve comes back!” “Bill!” “Yell, missus?” 
“ Bill, don’t address any von in publick hut your ekals!” 
“My eye, here ve are, thicker and faster! Yer e do 
all the canges and ’buses come from, and those beastly 
horrid wans. Hurrah! dust and a small shower. 
Here ve are, spots all over me, like a tiger! Best 
pitch on the ground—near to the ropes. Pull in. 
Derby’s von ! Throw up your tile, Sniggers. My eye, 
ain’t Rosschild a lucky von, and he don’t vant the 
money neither. I’m blessed if the donkey hasn’t eaten 
up the happle tarts! Yell, no matter. Yere’s the 
champagne ? Now then, the races is all over.” “ Mrs. 
Simmons, you’re tight! ” “ Sniggers, you’re another ! ” 
“ Mrs. Sniggers don’t squint.” “ Sniggers, look to your 
own ogles.” “ Here we are, home again ! Sniggers, did 
we stop at any of the publics?” “ Publics?” “Ay, 
I’m blessed if we ain’t all tight! Tight as the brave 
old oak—all tight but the donkey! Here we are, 
ninety-too in Costermonger Skervare ! Capital day. 
Bring in thehanimule.” “ Sniggers, your hand—Simmons 
yours. Mrs. Simmons, you’re a brick—Mrs. Sniggers, 
you’re a ditto repeated. Fare veil! for we are nafbu— 


58 


LONDON AMUSEM ENTS-THEATRES. 


no, that’s not it—and we won’t go home, so away with 
melancholy-—and —let me like a soldier fall! auld lang 
syne—acquaintance be forgot—sake of—never brought 
to mind—brought to mind.” “ Chorious, my nobles— 
chorions— never brought to mind—to old acquaintance, 
old acquaint — lang—should—forgot — and never— 
Hurrah! Epsom for ever!” All fall fast asleej 
and the moke snores through his slumbers in the corner. 

The costers are all peculiar in their habits, honest as a 
class, and independent in their dignity and self-reliance. 
The coster’s horse is well fed and carefully dressed. 
His donkey is the pride of many households, and his 
dog petted equally with Belgravian pups. Their slang 
is, perhaps, the most objectionable thing we can call 
up against them at the present, and the vulgarity of 
their speech is really worthy of amendment; otherwise, 
they are decent citizens, plain-spoken Englishmen, 
good parents, excellent traders, and as fine feeders as 
any race of traders in the world. 



CHAPTER X. 

LONDON AMUSEMENTS. 

London Theatres. —The novelty and attractions of 
our Theatres are pronounced to be unceasing and un¬ 
dying. From childhood to age the play has an ' 
attraction that is almost a part of our nature, and the 



INTELLECTUAL ENJOYMENTS IN THE METROPOLIS. 59 

love of the drama is therefore instilled into ns in the 
early dawn of our existence. Shakespeare was an in¬ 
spired writer. Shakespeare’s was the finest mind that 
ever opened its vast stores to the world. Shakespeare 
was the greatest writer that ever appeared amongst us, 
and Shakespeare wrote for the stag®. The London 
Theatres, when in full swing—that is from the begin¬ 
ning of September to about the end of June—form 
one of the greatest intellectual enjoyments in the 
metropolis ; of course we speak of the principal estab¬ 
lishments, conducted by respectable and responsible 
men, men of intellect and honour, and not your shabby- 
genteel sensationalist , whose quackery is now so fully 
exposed, as—we presume—to be pronounced entirely 
ridiculous, where cardboard takes the place of human 
beings, and puppets, in every shape, cross bridges, 
or avenues, by jerks, and the wrong men win the race. 
When ropes drop from invisible hiding places, and 
burned tow makes us so familiar with fire that no 
burned child could ever dread it after. Thus our 
theatres may be pronounced on the road to a refinement 
of excellence that has not been sustained since the days 
of the elder Coleman, Ben Jonson, or Beaumont and 
Fletcher, and the legitimate comedy and homely play 
now hold the mirror up to nature in an attractive and 
instructive form. There are generally more than forty 
theatres open during the winter months and may be 
found in every part of London. This number has been 
most artistically and elegantly increased by two theatres 
on the site of old “ Lyons Inn,” under the superinten¬ 
dence and mature plans of F. II. Fowler, Esqre., the 
eminent architect of Fleet Street. It may be as 
interesting to the resident as to the visitor to peruse 
the following vast array of houses of entertainment, 
open nightly in London, for the recreation of—hut a 


60 LONDON AMUSEMENTS’—THE ACTOR’S POSITION- 


moiety of course—of its three millions and a half of 
inhabitants. 


Artelplii. 

Alhair'bra. 

Alexandra. 

Alfred. 

Amphitheatre Circus. 
Astley’s. 

Bayswater. 

Bower. 

Bijou. 

Britannia. 

Cabinet. 

Charing Cross. 

City of London. 
Court. 


THEATRES. 
Covent Garden. 
Drury Lane. 

East London. 

Gaiety. 

Garrick. 

Grecian. 

Globe. 

Haymarket, 
Dengler’s Cirque. 
Holborn. 

Italian Opera House. 
Lyceum. 

Olympic. 

Opera Comique. 


Oriental. 

Pavilion. 

Philharmonic. 

Princess’s 

Prince of Wales’. 

Queen’s. 

Royalty. 

Sadler’s Wells. 

St. George’s. 

St James’s. 
Strand. 

Standard. 

Surrey 

Vaudeville. 


London Actor.—H ere we have a wide field for 


observation—suffice as a class, he is a gentleman, and a 
scholar. Actors, as a rule, are men of presence by 
good breeding and frequently with family associations 
that are equal to many of the aristocrats who assemble 
to witness their performance. We speak here only of 
the first-class men in the profession, and they are the 
majority; yet even the “ little people ” have some 
dignity to boast of, and are frequently found to be men 
of gentle culture, and the possessor of various elegant 
accomplishments, that many an honest burgess may 
deny to the appointed successor in his peculiar calling. 
As a rule the actor dresses well, and with perfect taste, 
avoiding the slightest affectation of color in his gar¬ 
ments, and exhibiting a quiet demeanour in his absence 
from theatrical duty. He puts on the spangles, silk 
velvet robes, and silken hose, mounts a plume of ostrich 
feathers, and forthwith becomes the noble of the play. 
He is the hero, and woos my lady to a happy conclu¬ 
sion—or dies lamenting the unfaithfulness of his heart’s 
adored. He may be a tyrant and cause the dismay of 
the whole kingdom. His position may be comic; a 
facetious friend, or a serious one ; he may even put on 
“ plush,” coat and whiskers and affect himself in cari- 





THE NATIONAL OPERA AND NATIVE TALENT. 61 

caturing the manners of my lord and master—or 
become a midnight assassin, all black hair, doublet and 
trunk hose. Yet out of all this, singly and collectively, 
he emerges—unlike the chrysalis into the butterfly— 
but into sober garments once again, and mixes with 
mankind in the usual parlance of the period. There 
is a natural importance in his position which gives him 
unusual advantages, and he is therefore superior to 
many noble friends who may seek his society. 

The Opera in London. —The small modicum of 
success which has hitherto attended English Opera in 
London is sufficient to account for the apathy and 
caution of those persons who are regarded as its ficles 
achates, or acknowledged champions. The establish¬ 
ment of a real national opera has long been a leading 
idea with English musicians, hut at the right moment 
few have been found willing to sink their differences 
and unite their energies in order to accomplish so 
desirable an object. Moreover, fashion, which is a 
powerful lever in this country, has not seconded the 
project, for although it is considered haut ton to patronise 
French plays without reference to their tendencies, and 
Italian operas without caring how weak and insipid is 
the music, it is still regarded as plehian to take an in¬ 
terest in native talent, or he seen at an English opera 
performance. The break-up of the Pyne and Harrison 
company and the break-down of the so-called National 
Opera Association, have also operated to discourage 
further attempts to establish English opera on a sure 
basis, although it requires now but little acumen to 
perceive that many of the arrangements of these asso¬ 
ciations were such as to ensure failures rather than 
command success. It is plain that no performances 
could be remunerative when the mere cost of gas for 
lighting a theatre was the enormous sum of £90 a 


62 LONDON AMUSEMENTS—HIGH CLASS CONCERTS. 

week, as was the case under the management of the 
National Opera Association. 

London Concerts. —The very name of “ concerts,” 
carries a dignity, and an impressive feeling, that never 
fails in creating a respect, and inciting curiosity. Music, 
next to Shakespeare, is the highest class of art, and 
the many master minds that we associate with its 
invention, and its illustration, shed a lustre through 
the world, whenever their names are mentioned. No 
writers of prose receive so much homage as Donizetti, 
Bellini, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Wtber, Verdi, Mozart or 
Beethoven, not forgetting our native composers, Balfe, 
Wallace, Mellon, Romer, Barnet, and—though not an 
Englishman—the prolific Offenbach. The composition 
of sweet sounds is so beautiful, so inspiring in its holier 
aspirations, and so exhilarating in its more mundane 
character, that the “genius of sweet sounds,” is elevated 
almost to divinity while listening to, or performing, the 
melodious harmonies of these wonderful spirits of song. 
The London concerts are pre-eminent in their excellence, 
and the artistes that compose the companies, during the 
London season, are the most beautifully voiced men 
and women in the world. With the word “ concert ” 
is associated so much of purity, and almost nobility of 
character, that we are attracted almost imperceptibly ; 
and whether in sacred music or humorous composition, 
there is a feeling of its becoming even more purified by 
reason of its being taken from the roar and bustle of the 
theatre. The quietude of the simple melody is thus so 
perfect, and so intensified in its earnestness that it im¬ 
parts a more pleasant glow to the imagination, than any 
other source of enjoyment. The “ concert ” is undying, 
and though but a few names are used to make the meet¬ 
ing famous, such as Mario, Alboni, Patti, Santley, Sims 
Reeves and others, still those that are used to “ make up 


MUSIC AT ANY TIME IS A DELICIOUS SENSATION. 63 

a show ” are equal masters and mistresses of their art, 
and contribute as much real enjoyment, as the pre¬ 
siding genius, whose name we are bound to respect. 
Even simpler concerts of the ballad school only, attract 
thousands in all parts of London, and down to the 
penny readings (concerts in disguise), the same tone 
of respectability and homage seems to hover round the 
performances. London concerts are mostly perfect in 
their quiet arrangement, the selections from the won¬ 
drous field of song, are so various, and so beautiful, 
that one of our modern writers has classed them as 
entertainments for “ the better men and women of the 
world.” Even with the mixed class adopted, by tiie 
great Julian, matured and perfected by the late Alfred 
Mellon, and now continued by Mr. Riviere, there is 
an excellence in the general perfection of arrangement 
that has attracted fresh millions to hear good music, 
and in whom a taste has been imbued, that will last 
for life. Music at any time is a delicious sensation; 
but music in the evening, when the cares of the day 
are thrown by, seems more in season, and more capable 
of enjoyment. London concerts thus stand as monu¬ 
ments of the age to mark the progress of the good 
time, and to induce kindlier thoughts, when rougher 
fancies would fain intrude themselves into our natures. 

First and foremost among London musical entertain¬ 
ments stand the “ Monday Popular Concerts,” or, as 
they are more familiarly termed by their admirers the 
“Monday Pops.” These concerts are held in St. 
James’s Hall, Regent Street, and there the best com¬ 
positions of the best masters are from time to time 
interpreted by the best artistes to the delight of critical 
and enthusiastic audiences. The audiences of the 
“Monday Popular Concerts,” however, differ from con¬ 
cert audiences in general, for whereas the latter are 


64 LONDON AMUSEMENTS-PUBLIC HALLS, ETC. 


ever ready to do homage at the feet of some vocal 
celebrity, it is only the severely classical—the stringed 
quartet, or the sonata—that rouses to enthusiasm the 
audiences of a Popular Concert. The “ Philharmonic 
Society” and the “ New Philharmonic Concerts” also 
afford a thoroughly intellectual treat to their frequenters, 
boasting, as they do, some of the highest names in the 
vocal and instrumental world. To those who either 
from non-appreciation or a lack of musical education, 
steer wide of the classical composition, the “Ballad 
Concerts” prove a welcome boon, and assemble audiences 
as large and demonstrative in their way as any of their 
aristocratic brethren. At Exeter Hall, oratorio under 
the auspices of the “Sacred Harmonic” and “National 
Choral” Societies claims the support of a third party 
and never fails to delight the lovers of sacred music. 

Henry Leslie’s Choir combines the sacred with the 
secular, and is not the least enjoyable of the London 
musical entertainments. 

PUBLIC HALLS AND BOOMS FOR FIRST-CLASS MUSICAL 
ENTERTAINMENTS, &c. 

Agricultural Hall. i Egypti m Hall. Pimlico Room3 

Albion Hall. j Exeter Hall. j Polytechnic. 

Angell-park Gardens. | Floral Hall. j Poplar Board of Works 

Arundel Hall. i Freemasons’ Hall. Office. 

Beaumont Institution. Gallery of Illustration. St. James’s Hall. 

Bow and Bromley Insti- ! Greyhound, Hampton | Store Street Music Hall. 

tution. | Court 1 Sussex Hall. 

Brentford Town Hall. ! Hanover Square Rooms. j Town Hall, Shoreditch. 
Burdett Hall. j Horns, Kennington. j Tottenham Drill Hall. 

Chelsea Vestry Hall. | Hounsl >w Town HalL j The Queen’s Concert 

Clarence Hotel, Ted- Islington Institution. i Rooms. 

dington 1 Madame Tussaud’s. I Uxbridge Public Rooms. 

Crystal Palace. ! Myddleton Hall. j Willis’s Rooms. 

The Graphic says, “A building ought to be erected 
at the East-end of London, that would fairly compete 
as a place of recreation with the numerous music halls, 
A concert hall, where good music and good voices could 
be heard would he likely to interest the multitude,” 


LONDON MUSIC HALLS. G5 



London Music Halls. —The music hall in London, 
and indeed, anywhere else, is a modern institution, and 
it must be confessed, rather a violent one; its principal 
characteristics are racket and noise, from the loud 
crash of—sometimes—very indifferent orchestras, to the 
blatant prominence of some of our self-elected comique, 

E 































































































































66 LONDON AMUSEMENTS-THE REVEL BEGINS. 

and the unmusical pertness of the serio-comic ladies. 
The “ beery” smell of these glittering palaces, like the 
stables in a circus—is never absent, and the aroma of 
stale tobacco clings to the finery, despite any amount of 
atmosphere that may boldly attempt to conceal it. 
The music halls generally commence about eight p.m., 
and are divided into three classes of audience : gallery, 
balcony and orchestra stalls. The entertainment is 
fast and furious, and the compositions, both in music 
and poetry—very frequently—in very questionable 
taste. The songs of the ladies frequently contain 
some broad allusions that should never pass the rosy, 
bps of a “ feminine,” and requires the almost nude 
dress of a page and the can-can step in a concluding 
dance, to make their very silly compositions palatable. 
The comiques are only now becoming sensible that 
broad allusions are most repulsive to the rising genera¬ 
tion, and certainly repel the more respectable class of 
citizens, as also their wives and families. The nightly 
throng is generally composed of flashily dressed young 
men, and ladies in the most elegant modern attire, 
with that singular generosity of nature, that renders 
them willing to converse, or discuss the sparkling 
moselle, at an acquaintance of a few minutes’ notice. 
Paterfamilias, water, and daughters are absent, the 
tradesman and his brood are not attracted, and the 
working men and their children have yet to be studied 
before their presence can be in sufficient numbers to 
constitute patronage. The revel begins with clamour, 
generally a carefully selected popular overture. Then 
follow duets, by ladies; by ladies and gentlemen, nig¬ 
gers, comiques with melodies that have done service 
through many roving years, and frequently, the most 
ridiculous and barbarous words that man can cram his 
brain withal. The “ nigger ” is the most reputable of 


THE FAST ELEMENT IS MOST PROMINENT. 67 


the many musical artistes of the music hall (with the 
exception of the legitimate tenor and soprano), for a 
broad word seldom or never he utters. But the young 
ladies seem to be easily inoculated—for, sisters “ this ” 
and sisters “ the other ” seldom conclude their enter¬ 
tainments without some ugly attitude in their evolutions, 
or break-downs, that destroy the entire effect of their 
previous performance. 


MUSIC HALLS AND DANCES G ROOMS. 


Alhambra, Eastern. 

Gatti’s. 

Rodney. 

Aley’s 

Giles’s 

Sam Collins’. 

Apollo. 

Hungerford. 

Scott’s. 

Argyle. 

Jolly Tanners. 

Sinclair's. 

Bedford. 

Lord Raglan 

South London. 

Belvidere. 

London Pavilion. 

Star. 

Black Dog. 

Macdonald’s. 

Star and Garter. 

Borough 

Manor House. 

St. James’s. 

Caldwell's. 

Marylebone. 

Sun. 

Canterbury. 

Metropolitan. 

Three Colts. 

Cambridge. 

Middlesex. 

Three Nuns. 

Cavendish. 

Montpelier. 

Trevor Arms. 

Deacon’s. 

Nag’s Head. 

Victoria Hall. 

Eagle. 

Oxford. 

W’eston’s Royal. 

Evans’s. 

Philharmonic, 

W’hite Horse. 

Fal staff. 

Queen’s Head. 

Wilton’s. 

Foresters’. 

Regent. 

Winchester. 


The Ballet. —The Fairy Ballet, known to the 
world generally as scenes where young ladies disport 
themselves in a blaze of light, dressed in the flimsiest, 
showiest and scantiest of apparel, without the slightest 
approach to pantomimic story. The same music and 
the same dances serve for every novelty produced— 
Heaven save the mark—and the only motive appears 
to be the display of youthful female forms, fancy cos¬ 
tume, and pretty faces. This is another form of enter¬ 
tainment to he seen at the music hall, and has its 
attractions for worn-out old men and the roues of the 

da y- 

Operatic and ballad selections sometimes impart a 
charm to these entertainments, and are highly appre¬ 
ciated in return. Still, the fast element is the promi- 

e 2 




68 LONDON AMUSEMENTS-THE MUSIC HALL SNOB. 

nent one at the London mnsic halls, which are worthy 
a visit from the philosopher who would see life in a 
whirl, and dull care shut out during a long four hours’ 
occupation. 

The Music Hall Snob.— The Music Halls have 
engendered to a very great degree a class which may be 
properly described as above. The typical creature of 
this class stalks in with a jaunty air. His style of 
dress is in strict conformity with that of the “ Gent 
of the period.” He wears the most shiny of hats dia¬ 
gonally, on a head of hair—as glossy and as curly as po¬ 
matum and the irons can make it. His step is not such 
as his morning one when responding to his master’s call 
in the warehouse off Cheapside, but resembles more the 
working of two cork legs—a style of walking which is, 
according to this peculiar genus , the essential character¬ 
istic of good breeding. He leans across the table and 
places the knob of his short cane in the chairman’s 
hand by way of a salute. He always has the “straight 
tip,” and will “heat his ed if it ain’t right.” He boasts 
even of those vices which are beyond his reach, and will 
calumniate an actress whom he has never seen. 

London Hanging Looms. — Dancing presents the 
most fascinating attractions to the lovers of fashion, 
and as long as these people take more interest in 
cultivating their heels than their heads, dancing must 
flourish. The interior of the ball-room is a very 
moving scene. In this temple of the graces may 
often be seen a little miss paired with an old fat 
physician as tall as Big Ben, and as awkward in a ball¬ 
room as Ben Jonson. In another group may be seen 
a pale-faced student of the Temple with no more flesh 
on his bones than the apothecary in “Romeo and Juliet,” 
coupled with an elderly lady as fat as Falstaff, and with 
a face blazing like a transparency at the front of a 
masquerade warehouse. 


LAUGHTER-LOVING CROWDS-THE PADRONE. 69 

London Niggers.— There are blackened vocalists 
called niggers, who delight the gaping crowds morning, 
noon and night, in and around the metropolis, who are 
in the habit of making themselves up with burnt cork, 
striped trousers and long-tailed coats, huge collars, 
woolly hair and other characteristics of the genuine 
Negro;—numbers of these interesting blacks may 
daily be seen emerging with lively steps and cheerful 
voices, dressed in their grotesque costumes, on their 
way to amuse a generous public, and receive their 
coppery approbation. Lice, when he jumped “ Jim 
Crow,” thirty years since, little thought of being the 
progenitor of such a large family of colored melodists 
as appear necessary in the present day for providing al¬ 
fresco entertainments for laughter-loving crowds. 

The Italian organ-grinder in London is so univer¬ 
sally voted a nuisance, that the public may be 
indisposed to inquire into his home life, if the term be 
not a mockery. Nevertheless, the story recently un¬ 
folded at the Clerkenwell Police-court may be studied 
with advantage. A padrone was called to account for 
unlawfully receiving divers lodgers into an unregis¬ 
tered house. A policeman who had visited the place 
one night, said he found twenty organ-grinders herding 
together, their rooms being in the most filthy condition. 
Most of the men stated that they paid for their lodgings 
—the sums varying from Is. to 4s. per week—but a few 
said they paid nothing. The state of the house was not 
denied, but the defendant’s solicitor successfully con¬ 
tended that the organ-grinders were not lodgers, but 
servants, or if not servants, then partners. They did 
not pay the padrone anything for lodgings, but gave 
him half their earnings, whether the amount was much 
or little, and out of this money the padrone contracted 
that he would pay himself for their bed and board. 


70 LONDON AT THREE IN THE MORNING. 

The other moiety of each man’s earnings, it was added, 
was put on one side, and at the end of the contract was 
divided equally between the man and his employer. 
The magistrate expressed himself “ determined to put a 
stop to this overcrowding of Italians, who were treated, 
as far as their lodging was concerned, far worse than 
many gentlemen’s dogs.” 


CHAPTER XI. 

LONDON AT THREE IN THE MORNING. 

Covent Garden Market in the early morning affords 
a curious sight. From 3*30 to 4’30 there is little hustle 
in the market, though business goes on rapidly. Early 
risers of both sexes—a class of “ higglers ” who endorse 
the old proverb that “ the early bird catches the worm ” 
—flock to the market. They form a medium between the 
grower and the small dealer, buying the whole stock from 
the former, and seeking to sell portions of it to the latter 
at a higher price. The crowd and bustle increase from 
five o’clock up to seven or eight. Porters, with baskets, 
offer their help to buyers. The piazzas become very 
lively with their clamour. Against every post and 
pillar are small tables, where coffee, tea, bread and 
butter, may be purchased. Hawkers parade in every 
direction with cakes, buns, knives, and pocket-books 
for sale. It is freely granted that “ this market ” is 
the most popular, not only in England, hut throughout 
the world. It is supplied from all parts of the kingdom, 
and from every quarter of the globe, with fruits of the 
most exquisite flavour, flowers of the most fanciful and 
richest tints, and vegetables of the rarest and most 
varied description. Covent Garden Market is a limited 
arena, it is true, in comparison to its requirements, and, 




COVEJST GARDEN MARKET, 












































































































































































1'Z LONDON AT THREE IN THE MORNING. 

on market mornings, the streets and avenues around for 
half a mile are thronged with merchants and traders, 
with heavy carts or waggons, from the elegantly 
painted “picked in” van, to the hand-cart of the 
humble coster. The apparent tumult of these occasions 
is all sober business, and the earnestness of all present 
is most remarkable to a stranger, who is apt to look 
upon the scene as one of the wildest uproar and con¬ 
fusion. The thousands of tons of vegetables and fruit 
are dispersed through every avenue and artery of the 
metropolis by nine o’clock, and the market is then 
apparently emptied; excepting the many choice fruits 
and early vegetables to be found in the beautiful 
arcade, when the peaceable folks arrive on the exquisite 
mission of discovering delicacies for some poor cast- 
down invalid friend, and it is in this long continued 
arch that the bouquets are made for the evening 
exhibitions which do such terrible mischief in Cupid’s 
calendar, at balls, theatre, opera, concert, and in the 
private boudoir o r my “ ladye love.” 

It is supposed that no less than 35,000 persons are 
engaged in the service of filling the vegetable and 
dessert dishes of the metropolis 

Some idea may be formed of the taste for flowers in 
London and the extent of trade done in them, by read¬ 
ing a case of bankruptcy before Mr. Registrar Brougham, 
October 19 th, 1871, at the hearing of which a proof 
was put in for £353 for flowers supplied in six months. 
Among the items were charges of 10s. fid. for a moss 
rose, and £150 for lilies of the valley and ferns. 

The contrast between the Covent Garden of filly 
years ago and the present, is as wide a one as can pos¬ 
sibly exist. The old watchman, helpless for good, and 
the most corrupt of public officers, the turbulent and 
drunken old women, the porters quarrelling over their 



FAST MEN OF LONDON-THE COFFEE STALL. 73 

morning potations, tlie jaded and neglected horse, 
dropping beneath the cart-load of half rotten turnips, 
the London rakes (fast men of those days) making, not 
the night, but morning, hideous by their obscene blas¬ 
phemies, and deeming it conduct becoming of gentlemen 
to interrupt honest industry and to scoff at early 
labour; all this has gone, and the terrible lessons that 
it inculcated. Order is now preserved as well as it can 
be, amongst a rude assemblage of women and men 
whose battle for existence begins when the civilization 
of the great city slumbers. 


The London Night Coffee Stall. —It has per¬ 
haps been within the experience of the reader on his 
visit to I-ondon, supposing always that he is not 
a resident of the metropolis, to have been upon occa¬ 
sion, detained out of doors somewhat later than the 
ordinary hours of retiring to rest. A social gathering, 
a private party, or haply the theatre or other place of 
amusement, has compelled him to seek a distant abode 















































































































74 


LONDON AT THREE IN THE MORNING. 


on foot, in default of a suitable conveyance, and be lias 
had to wend liis homeward path through silent and 
almost deserted thoroughfares. 

The darkness of the night has heen partially re¬ 
lieved by the regularly disposed gas lamps, whose 
flickering radiance guides his steps, and directs the road 
by their diminishing points of light. The advanced 
hour, as the solitary walk is continued, is well indi¬ 
cated in the almost complete absence of other benighted 
wayfarers, and nobody can be seen, save the sombre 
ghost-like figure of the watchful policeman, who startles 
you in the suddenness of his appearance, as you come 
upon him at the corners of the streets, or under the 
central shade of a street lamp, as he steals quietly and 
silently on his beat. Excepted, however, are some 
casual homeward bound jelestrians, and here ai.d 
there, the quick flitting figure of some unfortunate 
woman, who gathering her tawdry finery together, glides 
up to you almost unseen, whispering some phrases of 
mocking endearment. Rejecting and unheeding the 
baneful advances, she curses you in her disappointment, 
as you pass on, leaving her alone in the gloom. . 

You hurry onwards ; an unusual glare of light on 
the far off pavement, and several figures moving about 
within its influence, attracts your observation. As you 
approach it, you recognise the coffee stall, a branch of 
night industry called into operation chiefly for the re¬ 
quirements of early workmen, who, in London, have 
frequently to come from long distances to be in good 
time to labour at their respective jobs or factories. 
Ostensibly for the use of these industrials alone, the 
stall-keepers have long since found out, that, by offering 
their wares directly the hour of midnight has turned, 
they can supplement the returns of their otherwise 
profitable business, in the custom of those waifs and 


LONDON AT ALL HOURS OF THE NIGHT. 


75 


strays of the population who from divers causes or 
for various purposes are to be found in London streets 
at all hours of the night. 

A feeling of curiosity may prompt you in this in¬ 
stance, to note the component characters of these chance 
nocturnal customers, who in default of resorting to the 
now closed public-houses, are compelled to seek their 
required refreshment after toil or pleasure, in the more 
innocent beverages that are legally permitted to be 
vended during the night. Arriving at the spot, the stall, 
a mere box upon wheels with a pent roof, is already 
surrounded, and the excuse of a cup of hot coffee at 
the modest charge of one penny, will allow you every 
facility for surveying the group who, like yourself, are 
belated and present here, to partake of the dark brown 
muddy fluid, that bears no other affinity to the decoc¬ 
tion you asked for, except by its appearance and colour 
alone. The scalding warmth, however, is apparently 
trusted to, for the purpose of disguising the real origin 
of its composition. Equally suspicious tea is also to be 
had here, and for masticatory delights, slices of bread 
plastered with strong-smelling butter or grease, and 
dark dusty segments of stony plum cake are displayed 
in piles to feed the customers. 

As a new comer, your appearance creates a mo¬ 
mentary stir, the individuals around scanning you from 
top to toe with a sort of defiant curiosity, and remark 
upon your very unusual appearance and attire. Returning 
the compliment, they cease their rude inspection and 
become again absorbed in their refection, or resume the 
several conversations at the point at which they had 
been interrupted by your arrival. Their discourse is 
not sufficiently worthy of attention, nor does it enter 
into our purpose to dwell upon its nature. 

The stall-keeper, a most unhealthy-looking man, 


76 


LONDON AT THREE IN THE MORNING. 


with a muffler round his neck—the business and the 
unnatural hours he is obliged to keep accounting 
sufficiently for any amount of bad health—is conversing 
with a customer, a cabman, the most sprightly and 
wide-awake person, seemingly, of all; and whose hansom 
cab is near at hand in waiting. The topic that in¬ 
terests them, hinges upon a recent fatal tire in the 
neighbourhood, and each of the disputants appear to 
imply, that they could have separately done more 
• towards the extinction of the conflagration, and the 
salvation of life, than the constituted authorities at the 
scene. Next to the cabman, who smokes a pipe with 
his coffee, you remark an elderly female—old in sorrow 
and want possibly—who is both scantily and poorly- 
clad in shabby and rusty black, and shivers and 
trembles in the cold night air, whilst she sips the 
scalding beverage. She drinks with evident relish, for 
the grateful heat of the liquid diffuses its comfort 
through the pinched frame. The blackened forefinger 
of her left hand, as she holds the saucer with a certain 
poor grace, too truly denotes her occupation, for she is 
probably some poor needlewoman who has had to toil 
until this late hour. Eking out the scanty allowance of 
food, that she can only procure by protracted labour in 
sewdng, she must enjoy the vile tea she has bought. 
Her reddened eyelids and weary looks move you to 
compassion. Ask her to take some bread and she will 
refuse you. She cannot eat—she is too much fatigued 
and worn out—it is rest she wants. Another cup of 
tea, if you are so kind, she will take with pleasure. 
The second cup is eagerly swallowed, and repeating her 
thanks, she hurriedly departs to her humble home. 

A fresh claim on your bounty, however, proceeds 
from a miserable shoeless wretch whom you scarcely 
noticed before. He has been warming himself at the 


77 


THE CABMAN AND THE COFFEE SELLER. 

large fire-pan that supports and heats the kettles. He 
begs of you, and whines out that he has no money 
wherewithal “to blow my blessed kites out, guv’nor.” 
Your purse is again in requisition and you gratify the 
tramp, who is a blear-eyed drink-sodden man, wearing 
a worn-out ragged dress coat, once black, pinned and 
buttoned up to the throat, torn and split trousers, and 
with a “shocking had hat ” on his head. He devours the 
greased bread, and swills the ambiguous coffee with all 
the ravenous haste of hunger, and then looks for more, 
which you feel compelled to give. The cabman, with¬ 
out ceasing his conversation with the coffee-seller, whom 
he evidently knows, has remarked your movements and 
winks knowingly to the other, whilst the remaining 
individuals of the group come in for their share of 
your attention. 

The former feelings of curiosity and compassion 
change into contempt and disgust. A youth, he is 
hardly more in years, but whose appearance and man¬ 
ners point out as “a man upon the town,” is holding a 
cup, the contents of which he is spilling over his person 
in the vain attempt to get it down his throat. He may 
be of gentle birth and possessed of ample funds, to judge 
from his attire, hut you incline to the opinion—and you 
are correct in the latter case—that he must be some 
prodigal vagabond, or dishonest shopman or clerk, who 
has obtained the money for a night’s spree in some 
clandestine or surreptitious manner. The latter char¬ 
acter is the most impressive on your mind, as you 
listen to the gross and vulgar talk he employs, inter¬ 
larded as it is, by licentious slang and indecent quota¬ 
tions from popular songs of the day, addressed to the 
shameless partner of his midnight ramble. The truth 
of the adage “in vino veritas ” is verified, as he divulges 
the fact of a recent visit to a music hall, where he has 



78 


LONDON AT THREE IN THE MORNING. 


picked up with the dowdy who shares in his dissipa¬ 
tion, and you also gather that the attendant cab and 
its sprightly driver have been “chartered” for them. 

The sinful fair one, who is decked out in the most 
extravagant style of female fashion, is soliciting his 
speedy departure in her company, and fondles and 
caresses the drunken reprobate, whom she calls “’Arry,” 
in hideous semblance of affection She is sober enough 
in her politic wiles, and displays all her powers of fasci¬ 
nation to get him away, until you are nauseated as much 
by her fulsome blandishments, as by the rank odour of 
the vile smelling oil lamps that light up the scene, and 
the steam of the compounds hissing on the embers. 

The heavy tramp of an approaching policeman is 
heard. You may not possibly care to be even seen in 
such company, and pay the modest score demanded for 
the untasted cup and depart, satisfied for once with the 
aspect and surroundings of the night coffee stall of 
London. 

London Early Lookers-out. —Here is a species of 
London destitution that we do not remember to have 
ever read about. At break of day, the most deplorable- 
looking of all God’s creatures will pass you, perchance, 
enjoying the luxury of worn-out slippers, with his eyes 
eagerly fixed upon the pavement, and many anxious 
side glances for the gutters as well. He will not notice 
you, much less beg from you ; in fact, he is looking out, 
not unaided by hope, for whatever the accidents or 
the debauchery of the previous night, cast upon the 
streets to appease his hungry mission. He has but one 
rival, who far outstrips his tottering footsteps— that is, 
the London street dog, the scamp of his tribe, an animal 
who has outlived all canine respect, and whose dire 
hunger has made a parasite. He follows you, an utter 
stranger, and wags Iris tail with a fondness as if you 



London police station. {See next page.) 





































































































































































80 


LONDON AT THREE IN THE MORNING. 


had served him. You drive him from you, and he 
wags his tail with equal affection and falls back, like 
oft denied poor relatives, too well accustomed to rebuffs. 
How many great spirits, equally destined for nobler 
ends, the iron hand of poverty has made like the 
London street dog. 

London Police Stations. —Here are assembled at 
periods all the gay roysterers of the previous night. 
Gents, city clerks, roughs and swell guardsmen, gay and 
wretched women and pickpockets, all those who have 
outraged the strict rules of respectable society. The 
inspector is a gray-headed man, sharp in his queries, 
and brusque in his manner. His keen eye glances 
swiftly over the offenders before him and seems to scru¬ 
tinise them as a hawk would a sparrow. Upon the 
night of our visit stood in the iron dock, an elegantly 
dressed young lady whose story was a sad one. She 
had listened to the voice of the charmer, and had 
relied on the sincerity of one who had won her 
to destruction. Home is abandoned for a lover, a 
few weeks are passed in revelry, and desertion is the 
natural consequence. Left at her lodgings without the 
means of subsistence, an uncouth landlady threatens to 
turn her into the street; terrified by the menace, and 
faithful in the belief of her lover’s return, she des¬ 
patches her jewellery at the hard request of the 
matron, and receives a small balance in return. Hope, 
however, gradually sinks within her, and tears and 
remorse bespeak her miserable thoughts. Stricken 
with horror at her position, fully aware now of her 
lover’s deceit, she, in the agony of remorse, writes to 
her peaceful country home to find her widowed father 
dead. Hying of a broken heart when the disgrace of 
his only child came upon him. Maddened, in the 
depths of her despair, she leaves her cruel lodging and 


THE OLI) BOW STREET OFFICERS. 


81 


»*ushes to tlie river. Her frantic steps attract the 
passers-by, and the good Samaritan is at hand to savo 
her from perdition. The inspector reassures the 
trembling girl, and the light of penitence seems to 
dawn upon her. She is kindly tended by these appa¬ 
rently rough men, whose hearts albeit, are in the right 
place, till means are found to comfort the poor castaway 
and she has courage, though with a sorrowful and broken 
heart, to return to her simple village home. Night 
after night the most varied scenes constantly occur in 
these haunts of justice. The thief and the refuse of hu¬ 
manity are almost the only specimens of mankind seen 
there, and what a feeling must be raised in the hearts 
of those whose constant duty is to be amongst them. 
Happy he, who, in the peaceful country shades, does not 
know or ever learn the vice and misery that exists in 
this great metropolis. 


CHAPTER XII. 

LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT. 

“ Preterea, ne sic, ut qui jocularia, ridens 
Percurram,” &c.— HorSat. /., Lib I. 

The dodo is extinct, the auk has well nigh dis¬ 
appeared from the face of the earth, and so the old 
race of medical students. 

The past generation, however, is an instructive one 


* The old Bow Street officers were called by the fast men “Robin Red¬ 
breasts,” on account of their wearing red vests ; and though they were a set 
of brave and resolute men, they were too limited in numbers to be generally 
effective. Amongst the most vigilant and energetic we may mention Lead- 
bitter, Ruthven, Keys, and Goddard. At night the only protection afforded 
was a tribe of guardians, who though infinitely more in numbers, were far 
less useful in effect. These night guardians were generally aged and in¬ 
effective men, whose duty was to parade the streets ; and the inhabitants, 
by rotation, had to sit up every night at the watch-house in Portugal Street, 
to take the charges. A pleasant task, after a man had been attending to his 
business all day. 


F 





82 


LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT 


to review. The student of half a century ago was, in 
many respects, better adapted to the exigences ot his 
position than the present one, with all his faults—-and 
they were legion ; with all his mischievous proclivities, 
and they were innumerable ; with all his inherent love 
of rows, and it was unlimited. There was a physical 
basis beneath them which maturer years ripened into 
solid, sterling, and practical usefulness. The practitioner 
of that period can hold his own, even now, and has 
little reason to blush at his store of knowledge, com¬ 
pared with that of the modern student. The last 
generation, like aborigines astride the boundary hue 
between barbarism on the one hand and civilization on 
the other, were placed in the via media between the 
bleeding and plastering and shaving barber, and the 
gentleman conservative surgeon of the present day. 
Their early career was, in many instances, a trying one 
—a five or six years’ apprenticeship, a hard master, 
poor fare, still poorer sleeping accommodation, and 
plenty of hard work. These were the preface to walk¬ 
ing the hospital. The apprentice of the past was a 
slave, valued much in the same light as a “ Down 
Souther ” a few years ago valued a nigger—as a money¬ 
bringing and money-making animal. Is it matter of 
surprise that his years of slavery should, when freedom 
was obtained, tend to make the student in this city a 
little boisterous? Anxious to blow off the long pent up 
but superfluous steam, in every available place, expend¬ 
ing it at one time upon the placid bell and inviting 
door-knocker, and at another upon the prominent 
feature of those admirable guardians of the public, the 
“ peelers.” But, despite all their imperfections as 
students, the present state of medical knowledge bears 
ample testimony as to their value as men and prac¬ 
titioners. I emphatically declare, and I can maintain 


FRESH FROM SCHOOL AND HOME. 


83 


the assertion, that no class of men has done more for 
humanity—nor deserves so well of it—as the medical. 
And none have done so much with so little return. 
Again, no profession has been so progressive as that of 
medicine; neither has any one been so fruitful a 
parent of inventions and beneficial improvements, 
which have culminated into inestimable contributory 
blessings towards the welfare of the human race. 

The present race of students have some defects— 
they are errors in the opposite extreme to those of the 
prementioned. 

How often do we hear the assertion that “ medical 
students are wild”—fond of doing those things which 
they ought not to do, and just as perversely leaving 
undone the duties which it is requisite they should do. 
But-this is an unqualified assertion; it has not even 
the excuse of “ exceptions ” to its sweeping condemna¬ 
tion. Howsoever true of a former period, it is applic¬ 
able now in a very limited sense to a select few, who 
come to this city with all its seductive pleasures for 
the first time in their life Fresh from school and 
home with their restrictions; away from everybody 
that they know or that could control thorn, and enjoy¬ 
ing unlimited freedom in lodgings with that “open 
Sesame”—a latch key—a student on this inclined 
plane of life must have very good break power if he 
can restrain his engine from going down the hill. 

There are some boys, or rather men, who can be 
trusted. I may say that the majority of students can 
be left even in lodgings in London, and they will con¬ 
duct themselves just as honorably away from the ruling 
influence of mothers, or fathers, or schoolmasters, as 
under it. But there are men, though scanty in number, 
who have learned more that is bad than good in the 
provincial towns where they have previously lived. 

f 2 


84 


LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT. 


Arrived in London, they soon meet with congenial 
companions, whose knowledge of the evils of this world 
is simply great—men who are as well acquainted with 
town life in all its phases as they are with their alphabet. 
Men not to be imposed upon by the picturesque beauty 
of easy virtue, nor the exorbitant demands of a rascally 
cabby, who may for the nonce imagine he has a country 
fellow to deal with. Not quite so green as they look 
are these ungodly chips—these members of craft whose 
sole object seems to be selfish enjoyment of the present 
at the expense of the future. It would not matter 
much if these brother “corks” or “chips” had no 
desire to increase the fraternity. But here lies the 
mischief—the raw, inexperienced novice, whose eyes 
have for the first time rested on this great city, whose 
previous range of travels had never extended beyond a 
radius of ten or twelve miles, whose sole knowledge of the 
manners and customs of humanity had been derived from 
the people in his neigbourhood, such a one falls a ready 
prey to the solicitations of the experienced corks. What 
delight the newly initiated cork affords to the master 
corks —his astonishment, his simplicity—in short, his 
ignorance of things evil, generally termed “ greenness,” 
is mysterious as it is laughable to them. But boys 
and men learn soon enough how to travel at a good 
pace down hill, and soon the newness wears off; the 
places of amusement, questionable and unquestionable, 
have lost their charm; the snug and quiet retreats 
known only to the initiated, are no longer visited with 
the same sensations as formerly; he is “blaze ”—he 
longs for exploits of a still more questionable nature. 

But on the other hand, the average student has a 
great capacity for work, and when the period of relax¬ 
ation comes, he enters into the enjoyment of the hour 
with all the zest of a man who really means it. 


IN THE DISSECTING ROOM. 


85 


Look at him at work, and then watch him in the zenith 
of his pleasures, and you say at once—how different 
the characters ; Yining as Fosco and Yining as himself 
are not more different. In the lecture theatre he 
attentively listens to that eloquence, pregnant with 
learning, which falls from the lips of his teacher. 
With note-book before him, and Ins pencil guided by 
busy fingers, he dots down the pith and marrow of the 
lecture and makes it his own. In the dissecting room, 
seated with an apron like toga, armed with his knife 
and forceps, he proceeds to unravel the mysteries of 
life with all the solemnity which so important a labour 
inspires him with. Layer by layer the various tissues 
are unfolded; one by one the diverse organs of the 
once living body are displayed, and thus he learns the 
complicated mechanism of the living being from that 
which had played its part in the drama of the world, 
but whose spirit had gone to the God who gave it. 
By the bedside of the patient he is no less thoughtful 
and mindful of the great goal of his studies : to learn 
from the present that which will prove of service to 
humanity in the future. Look through all the London 
and provincial schools, you will find that hard-working, 
pains-taking students constitute the majority. And it 
is these able men who are drafted into the world as 
practitioners, candidates for favour, as custodians of 
the public health. Like young colts, they are early 
put in harness and the majority continue in it until 
death robs them of their vitality. How many die 
highly admired by the many, loved and cherished by a 
few, and abundantly respected by the mass, whose 
names never travel beyond the neighbourhood in 
which they have lived and successfully practised— 
men who have laboured in the good cause—heroes of 
humble life, and true heroes too, thankful of the health 


86 


LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT. 


and strength given them to labour, and absolutely un¬ 
mindful of the ambition which stimulates them to 
greater deeds, which they might justly aspire to. 
There are hundreds such—men whose daily lives are 
risked for the good of the people, a risk which is never 
appreciated by those for whose sakes it is encountered. 
The heroic act of a fireman excites sympathy and 
unloosens the purse strings of the public; but the 
doctor who courageously combats contagious diseases 
of every character at the risk of his own life—at the 
risk of that of his wife and family—does it as such a 
matter of course, that not even a soul in the universe 
thinks anything of it. How many deaths of medical 
men are yearly chronicled, martyrs to duty P While 
the only chimes that accompany their departed souls 
are the monotonous and discordant brayings, that they 
have been well paid for it. Now this is an egregious 
mistake on the part of the British public. 

The medical man is in proportion as badly paid as the 
curate. His medical education is almost as expensive 
in the first place; taken at an average, he cannot 
qualify at less than £400, and at an expenditure of 
brain power, if he does his duty, which is simply 
enormous; plus at a loss of five to six years time. 
The curriculum of a medical student's career is almost 
overburdened to an absurdity ; while, as year succeeds 
year, the restrictions and labours are becoming more 
stringent and impossible. 

Let any disinterested individual wade through the 
subjects which a medical student is required to know, 
and let him examine the papers which he is demanded 
to answer, irrespective of viva voce examinations, and 
he will then wonder how it is possible for any grey 
matter to hold all that is necessary to pass an exami¬ 
nation. But the examinations passed, and the struggle 



THE MEDICAL STUDENT IN THE LECTURE THEATRE 




























































58 LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT. 

for existence only commences. Who will trust a young 
man fresh from the schools ? Echo answers, nobody ! 
ergo , the newly fledged medical man must go as an 
assistant, to keep body and soul together—must work 
night and day for a paltry £50 a year and board; and 
probably for many years before he can work a practice 
for himself. All are not blessed with money, and I 
pity the medical man who is not. 

On the other hand, there are some who may thank 
Heaven, aye, and fervently, that they have had fathers 
before them—men who enter at medical schools without 
the slightest intention to work, and carry out that in¬ 
tention in its absolute sense by rarely putting in an 
appearance, either at lectures, at the hospital, or in the 
dissecting room. One year—two years—pass away 
and not one step in progress has been made; not a 
single medical fact has entered their brains. Their 
grey matter, like a badly cultivated field, has lain 
fallow, depreciating in value by the mode of life com¬ 
mon to the idlers and drones of the medical schools. 
Notoriety they may have obtained. The heads of the 
departments know them well; and some are not even 
unknown to the metropolitan magistrates. These are 
the men who carry huge sticks ; wear their hats on one 
Vie of their heads; dress in a swellish, free-and-easy 
st yle; spoon barmaids by the half day, in public 
t verns; twist knockers off doors; arouse the peaceful 
inhabitants of a street, or a square, by pulling every 
hell-handle within reach ; who think it is something to 
boast of to kick up a row at Evans’s, or in the low 
music halls ; who go to the theatre, half seas over, and 
shout and yell like lunatics escaped from Bedlam. If, 
perchance, they attend a lecture, they contrive to make 
as much noise as possible, and annoy the lecturer to the 
utmost of their ability ; throw peas at attentive students; 


PUSHED THROUGH HIS EXAMINATIONS. 89 

pile hats to an amazing height, only to tumble over— 
just like babies play with toys—at some interesting 
part of the lecture. Some of these inventive good-for- 
nothings have the faculty of mimicking the mewing of 
cats ! others take a small pocket musical box, to regale 
the unmusical ear of the professor with the melodious 
strains of the “Old Hundredth/’ the “Harmonious 
Blacksmith,” &c. In short, these are the Darwinian 
representatives of thepast generation, retaining all their 
crude mental irregularities, but being absolutely desti¬ 
tute of any of the good ones. 

These are the men who bring disgrace upon their 
teachers, upon the schools, and upon the medical 
profession. Paterfamilias has had his pockets drained 
and drained year after year until he is tired of being 
drained—he has lived in hope so long upon the 
oft-reiterated lies of his apparently hopeful son, and 
it is easy to talk largely away from the schools— 
until doubt creeps into his mind, rankles there until 
satisfied by enquiry. Enquiry not only confirms but 
astonishes him, though expecting confirmation of his 
previous doubts. As a last resource, he is placed under 
a grinder; and by dint of short pocket allowance, 
stringent supervision, and much cramming, the prodigal 
but unrepentant individual is pushed through his ex¬ 
aminations. Does he recover his status hereafter ? 
Some do not. And those who do are men of ability, 
but a natural inclination to idleness and a too apt 
readiness to be biassed by the persuasion of the disso¬ 
lute, renders them very easy prey to the medical student 
sharper. It is only in after life, when the necessity 
for work is urgent and prominently defined, that he 
throws off the bonds and fetters of his old life—like a 
big dog shakes himself after emerging from water— 
and enters into the channel which he ought to have 


90 


LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT. 


done some years before. But it is never too late to 
mend; and many of those men who have led an idle 
and dissolute student life, emerge from the half de¬ 
veloped chrysalis condition, into the more perfect animal, 
a really good, pains-taking, hard-working, and trust¬ 
worthy citizen. 

But how difficult a matter is it for the idle and 
dissolute, minus ability, to reverse the habits of mis¬ 
spent years F It is easier for a camel to walk through 
the eye of a needle ! The history is short—from bad 
to worse! Bad students—idle men—unqualified assist¬ 
ants—lovers of strong drink—delirium tremens—work- 
house—or, death. 

The pathway of success in the medical profession is 
a very bad road to travel; it requires more of the 
fortiter in re than the suciviter in verba . Hard work 
(practical and theoretical) not 'per salturn work, but 
persistent steady work will alone command success. 
This much must be said, that the materials of examina¬ 
tion might be readily reduced to one-fourth of their 
present capacity, with great advantage to the profes¬ 
sion and the public. The councils of the various 
examining boards are able and clever men, and like 
men of such character they fancy that every student is 
endowed with equivalent brain faculty. It is a great 
mistake, and if they were so endowed it would be still 
so. What is really wanted, in general practice, is a 
man well acquainted with the practical knowledge of 
his profession, and not with the will-o’the-wisp theories 
of science. There can be no doubt of this fact, that a 
man with ordinary ability, who has served as an 
apprentice or an assistant for five or six years, is much 
better qualified for the exigencies of a general practice 
than the most highly polished student, whose medical 
education commenced at a Metropolitan school, and 


A WONDER NOT SIMPLY GOOD FOR NOTHING. 91 

ended there when a qualified man. The total abolition 
of apprenticeship work is a step in the wrong direction, 
and the admission of school hoys into the profession is 
a sad mistake. However, there are some good men 
to whom duty is their guiding law and good angel. 
With examinations or without them—with tests of all 
sorts or without them—they would be good men, honest 
to themselves and their patients, and being honest 
would never neglect an opportunity of acquiring infor¬ 
mation, at even any expenditure of labour, that could 
be of any service to humanity in the future of their 
career. The tendency now is just running to the other 
extreme of the early days of the English profession; 
then, no education at all; now, it is over-education. 
The poor students are crammed with book-work to 
repletion ; educated for everything, and it is a wonder 
to me that they are not simply good for nothing. 

J. B. P. 


Curiosities op Life. —Half of all who live die before seven¬ 
teen. Only one person in ten thousand lives to be one hundred 
years old. and but one in a hundred reaches sixty. The married 
live longer than the single; and out of every thousand born only 
ninety-five weddings take place. Of a thousand persons who have 
reached seventy there are of clergymen, orators, and public 
speakers, forty-three ; farmers, forty ; workmen, thirty-three ; 
soldiers, thirty-two ; lawyers, twenty-nine ; professors, twenty- 
seven; doctors, twenty-four. Farmers and workmen do not arrive 
at good old age as often as clergymen and others who perform no 
manual labour ; but this is owing to the neglect of the laws of 
health, inattention to proper habits of life in eating, drinking, 
sleeping, dress, and the proper care of themselves after the work 
of the day is done. These farmers or workmen eat a heavy supper 
on a hot summer’s day, and sit around the doors in their shirt¬ 
sleeves, and in their tired condition and weakened circulation, are 
easily chilled, laying the foundation for diarrhoea, bilious colic, 
pneumonia, or consumption .—British Medical Journal. 



92 


CHAPTER XIII. 

LONDON CLUBS AND RESTAURANTS. 

Foremost in the London system of clubs are those at 
the West-end, located in buildings that give dignity 
and beauty to the streets by their architectural splen¬ 
dour, and that afford advantages and facilities of living, 
which no fortunes except the most ample could procure, 
to thousands of the most eminent persons in the land, 
in every line, civil, military and ecclesiastical, peers 
spiritual and temporal, commoners, men of the learned 
professions, those connected with literature, science, the 
arts, and commerce in all its principal branches, as 
well as the distinguished who do not belong to any 
particular class. These are represented by the Carlton 
and the Reform, the Senior and the Junior United 
Service, the Army and the Navy, the University, the 
Athenaeum, and the Travellers’, with a host of others. 

Here a member for a few guineas a-year has an 
excellent library, with maps, as well as books, all the 
papers, daily and weekly, English and foreign, the 
principal periodicals, every material for writing, and 
attendance for whatever is wanted. In a house, too, 
which is a sort of palace, a member possesses the 
greatest degree of liberty in living, comes when he 
pleases, stays away when he likes, and has whatever 
meal or refreshment he wants at all hours. 

With every opportunity of indulging in living, excess 
s seldom committed in these high-class clubs. If the 
expenses of about 20,000 dinners in the course of a 
year at one of them, say the Athenaeum or Reform, 
were taken, each dinner on an average would cost 
about 2s. 9d., and the average quantity of wine for 
each person would be found to be about half-a-pint. 



WEST-END CLUB 










































































































































































94 


LONDON CLUBS AND RESTAURANTS. 


The habit of associating the notion of gentility with 
expense is discountenanced at these establishments. If 
a duke, with a hundred thousand a-year, dining on a 
joint, is charged fifteenpence instead of a shilling for 
it, he bestirs himself till the odd threepence is struck 
off, taking the trouble of objecting in order to give his 
sanction to the principle. 

In less fashionable parts of London the taverns and 
coffee-houses supply the place for the holding of clubs, 
for the middle and working classes; and some of them 
are exceedingly well conducted. 

There are many clubs called Lodges and Courts, 
largely patronised by the working classes, self support¬ 
ing, that partake not only of sociability, but by the 
prudence and forethought of the members, the world 
is benefited, and they exercise a powerful influence on 
the character of the times. To this class belong such 
Friendly Societies as the Odd Fellows, the Foresters, 
and others that might be mentioned. They have 
branches all over the country; and they are the means 
of a great saving to the poor rates. Their influence is 
growing stronger day by day, and considering the good 
they do to the widow and the orphan, they can justly 
claim the support of every man who wishes well to 
himself and fellow creatures. 

There is, or used to be, a very amusing club held at 
the Jerusalem Tavern, St. John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, 
named “The Modern Knights of Jerusalem,” who 
assembled in extreme conclave every Monday evening, 
when among gaudy banners floating on the walls the 
Grand Master ascended his throne in robes of state, and, 
surrounded by his commanders in black gowns, presided 
over the the proceedings, which consisted principally of 
inhaling “ Pine-apple llum Punch,” or mixtures of “ Cor¬ 
dial Gin” or “Peal Cognac.” The ordinary knights 


CLUES FOR MERRIMENT AND LAUGHTER. 


95 


sat at mahogany tables, around which gentle clouds of 
incense arose from pipes which sent forth their perfume 
from many mouths, except when these were giving vent 
to “tol de rol” and “ derrv down” of the mirthful 
singing—for the singing was mirthful, not licentious, 
improper songs not being allowed. 

A club entitled “ City of Lushington” exists, though 
not in its primeval vigour, at the “ Harp,” in Great 
Russell Street, Covent Garden. This rattle-brained 
society of theatrical, commercial, mechanic, and other 
worthies, was most solemnly established, many years 
ago, by the whimsical contrivance of a merry company 
of tippling citizens, that they might meet every night 
as Aldermen of the City of Lushington, each having 
his own particular seat denoted as his ward, and each 
member, on admittance, having a particular ward 
assigned to him. The aldermen might have gone a 
little further, and each taken a name on installation 
descriptive of his peculiar character or endowments, 
in which case there would have been such titles as Sir 
Sipall Paylittle, Sir Nicholas Ninny, Sir Talkative 
Dolittle, Sir Skinny Fretwell, Sir Ninny Sneer, and 
Sir Timothy Addlepate. 

Such clubs have for their sole object merriment and 
exercising the lungs, with a little seasonable laughter. 
In nine cases out of ten they originate from some 
whimsical fellow, who takes a fancy to see gathered 
together a party only of noseless persons, or men with 
ugly faces, or surly individuals; or the design of the 
establisher of such eccentric clubs is to propagate a new 
whim in which there shall he a spice of science as well 
as facetiousness, such as to “ promote useless as well as 
useful experiments.” 

London Restaurants.— With few exceptions, the 


96 


LONDON CLUBS AND RESTAURANTS. 


dining-rooms in London are simply lunclieon-bars 
covered with an array of plates of cold beef, indigestible 
veal-and-ham pies, overcooked or stewed joints soaked 
with greasy water called gravy, and such-like, after the 
lowest style of railway refreshment-rooms; anomalous 
places where, on the strength of the menu being written 
in bad French, and the waiters speaking with some 
indistinguishable foreign accent, youthful clerks devour 
curious masses of bad food, still worse cooked, under 
the impression that they are enjoying the handiwork of 
a worthy successor of Careme—everything, in fact, but 
a place where a plain and simple meal may be had, in 
tolerable comfort, at a reasonable price. There is a 
great deficiency in London of anything like proper res¬ 
taurant accommodation, either for habitual diners from 
preference, or for parties who wish occasionally to enjoy 
a social gathering, a change of scene, and a dinner 
somewhat beyond the capabilities of the ordinary do¬ 
mestic cuisine. Instead of being looked upon as on the 
Continent, as an ordinary customer, to be charged at 
the same fair rate of profit as the customer at a cigar 
shop or bootmaker’s, the man who wishes to dine well 
m London is regarded as a victim to be fleeced to the 
uttermost point. It is assumed that, if he is rich 
enough to afford a decently good dinner, with a bottle 
of decently good wine, he is a legitimate subject for 
every possible species of extortion; in fact, that he has 
no business to dine at all unless he is prepared to pay 
doubly for everything he has—ten shillings a bottle for 
wine that he can buy for less than sixty shillings a 
dozen, and twice as much for an indifferent dinner as 
would be charged for a good dinner at a first-class club. 
There seems no room in the English mind for the idea 
that men may want to dine well and comfortably, and 
yet not be utterly reckless as to expenditure. Such a 


WHERE LADIES COULD DINE. 


97 


man is treated in a London restaurant—we use the 
krench word, inapplicable as it is, because we have 
really none in our language—as if he were a visitor at 
Hastings or Ilfracombe in the height of the full season, 
to be charged upon the theory that it is advisable to 
make hay while the sun shines. There is no recog¬ 
nition of the fact that if one could dine in a pleasant, 
well-appointed restaurant, without paying one hundred 
per cent, tax for house-room, cooking, and attendance, 
it would induce a very large class to become regular 
customers, especially if it were possible to establish a 
restaurant in London where ladies could dine without 
being stared at as if the mere fact of their entering a 
public dining-room rendered them fair objects for im¬ 
pertinence.— Spectator. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

LONDON SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY 
MORNING MARKETING. 

There needs no preface or contrived prologue to be 
written to give importance to the title of this article 
when, by its significance, it recommends itself to the 
study of all classes of society. It is a story of the 
poorest of the very poor, and behoves us as Christian 
men and women to regard the subject with respect and 
attention. There are certain spots, in this huge hive 
of labour, where—from the insalubrity of the position 
or the barrenness of the ground—a vast number of our 
fellow creatures do herd and congregate. Worn out 
and tumble-down dwellings are their lot, and cellars 
and attics—cold, cheerless, and mouldy—they creep up 
to in the dark, or down to in the small hours of the 

G 



98 


LONDON SATURDAY NIGHT 


night, where candle is a wonder, and fuel as rare as 
diamonds beneath their pillows. The pallets of these 
poor forlorn creatures is not unfrequently a lump of 
rags or shavings—where, sobbing themselves to sleep, 
they wake to know that the new day brings them no 
pleasant thoughts, but that all is hopeless toil and 
deepest misery. Their lives are kept together by a 
mere attempt at trading, or by the slenderest of occu¬ 
pations. In some of these human dirty dens we find 
whole families herded together, each a little tale to tell 
of the scraps of life they have collected, and compare 
eagerly on the Saturday night their prospects for the 
coming Sabbath. The secret of the outcast is yet a 
mystery, still they do exist in thousands. Around and 
about Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Spitalfields, and 
even beside or behind the mansions of some of the 
wealthy classes, they congregate and swarm. Many 
of our very poor work for a very humble class, whose 
capital is not available till the work has been taken 
home, while the assistant worker has to wait patiently 
for his paltry dole. It may be close upon the stroke of 
twelve when he reaches his distant home, worn out in 
spirit and weary in every limb. His wife and children 
await him, and forthwith they hie to market. Leaving 
their squalid street, they slowly enter upon a roaring 
scene of apparent plenty. Men and woman are shout¬ 
ing the note of invitation to their unsavoury food, and 
rows of butchers’ shops, grocers, buttermen, fishmongers, 
and bakers are all ablaze with midnight trade, all 
hurrying and forcing the sales. Barrows of fish and 
vegetables fine the road. Old boots and shoes, crockery, 
umbrellas, and even artificial flowers, mix them in the 
unsavoury collection, and obtain ready purchasers, 
while hundreds are found unable to meet the Saturday 
night’s demand, and so return to home, waiting the 


AND SUNDAY MORNING MARKETS. 


99 


staler refuse of tlie Sunday morning remnants. The 
New Cut on Saturday nights is all ablaze with swinging 
naptha flames, and loud with Babel-cries; there may 
be seen the harrow with emblazoned golden letters 
which tell you that Sarsaparilla wine is sold at one- 
penny, three half-pence, and two-pence per glass; 
another is vending liquid in small bottles to cure all the 
aches and pains that affect poor humanity. The sur¬ 
roundings of Clare Market, situate in our West Central 
District, swarm with the residences of the poor, and 
to Clare Market also do their weary footsteps tend. 
Venture we into Tothill Street, Westminster, and there 
the same scenes are enacted—the same roar, hustle, and 
offensive demoniac glare of lights—the same quiet, 
worn, and earnest faces traversing the bye-ways 
—the same haggling for farthings and even half- 
farthings. Roam we now to Whitechapel, and lnire 
again Saturday is rampant. “Seven Dials” is a 
tranquil haven of repose—though bad enough—after 
the experience amongst the refuse of the London food. 
We have the barrow and the coster, the earnest 
matron, or the sleepy children at their stalls; they are 
a multitude in themselves, and the shopkeepers and 
the publics drive a roaring trade. The business is 
principally with the barrow, for provision stores do not 
abound in this neighbourhood; being more devoted to 
bird selling, vendors of old boots, threadbare and 
artificially dyed-up garments; haberdashery is disposed 
of by mock auction. A man mounted on a low cart is 
selling stockings: “Now’s yer chance, who’ll buy some 
of the real army stockings, made for the Habbysinian 
Hexpedition ? ’ere they are, ’ere’s the marks A. C., 
Army Clothing, what do ye say P one and six the two 
pair ? well, one and four ? one and two ? come then, 
’ere’s a chance, two pair of real Habbysinian stockings 
L. of C. G 2 


100 


LONDON SUNDAY TRADING. 


for one shilling! Well, you are down on your luck if 
that won’t tempt yer, so I’ll tell yer what I’ll do. I 
never did it afore for nobody, but I’ll do it for you. 
Here are two pair of the real Habbysinian stockings 
for the small sum of nine-pence ! Sold again, and got 
the money.” The “ London Hoad,” Southwark, has 
also its Saturday and Sunday cheap markets. From 
nine to eleven or twelve, the purchasers assemble in 
multitudes—unwashed, ragged, and forlorn—the sight 
is truly pitiable. Again, the markets busy in the 
blaze of day, with the remnants of the Saturday sale; 
and Sunday lowers the price of the bits of meat by so 
much of a fraction, that the very poor can buy, and 
the miserable creatures hurry home—laden, in their 
shawls, ragged handkerchiefs, or broken baskets—with 
the coarse and parched-up food they had despaired of 
while the poor above them were making their luxurious 
purchases. The noisy ones are the vendors, though, 
heaven knows, in many instances they are as poor as 
the buyers; and it is this unseemly and uncalled for 
riot that has offended the charitable souls of the 
gentlemen of the Lambeth Yestry, who threaten to 
abate the nuisance of Sunday trading under Mr. Bruce's 
Act. The sight is certainly not edifying, but it would 
be hard and stony to deprive these very, very poor 
people of purchasing their coarse meals at the only 
time that the opportunity and their means will permit 
them. Close the provision stores of those choice gentle¬ 
men of the Yestry, and their groan would be, “inter¬ 
ference with the liberty of the subject.” Let them 
rather seek to train this weak and bewildered class to 
habits of remunerative industry, and the “ poorest of 
the very poor ” would, doubtless, better the instruction 
by becoming better Christians, while the vendors would 
push a better trade by mild behaviour and humility. 



15 COLONNADE, CLARE MARKET; USED AS A BOYS SCHOOL, REFUGE,^POOR DWELLINGS, ETC 




























































































































































































































































































































































102 


CHAPTER XY. 

LONDON BOYS AND GIRLS. 

The London Boys. —Boys constitute a great pro¬ 
portion of the population of London, and it is surprising 
the number of them that are to be seen in the streets. 
It may he presumed that the men are mostly pur¬ 
suing their business avocations. There are industrious 
boys, idle boys, mischievous boys, vagabond boys, 
boys steeped in commerce with match selhng, paper 
boys—that is newspaper imps—fruit boys, and cab boys, 
which latter class are the greatest pest to the cab¬ 
riding Londoner, when his services are rendered in 
dirt and rags, in officious zeal, to open or close the door 
of the vehicle. Take we therefore, first in our ad¬ 
miration, the honest and industrious boy. 

The Shoeblack. —This little fellow is not only an 
useful, but an ornamental addition to the town. His 
youth, and smart attire, recommend him at a glance, 
and his occupation is most acceptable. A little less 
importunity at times perhaps might be advised; but if 
his zeal outstrips his discretion, it is in the pride he 
may feel at the nightly gathering, where he presents 
his earnings to the president of the district. Take him 
generally, he is a polite boy; he touches his hat to in¬ 
vite you, and as each boot is polished, we are favoured 
with another military salute, and an extra one when he 
receives the coin. The boys are divided into districts, 
and each district has its own livery, and its own 
government. A central power, however, calls them all 
together at a season. They have their own bands of 
music, receive evening education, and in their marches 
are a most formidable regiment of youthful patriots. 
No man feels a gentleman in dirty boots; therefore— 
upon occasion, the penny spent with the shoeblack, is 
one as, converting us from shabby-genteel to a noble¬ 
man—one of the best investments in town. 


IMBUED WITH VAGABOND LIFE. 


103 


The Vagabond Boy. —Alas, poor fellow, he is to 
be found everywhere, driven from “post to pillar/ 



hunted as a dangerous brute, he h dcs him in any 
ready nook that he may find, whether beneath the 





























































104 


LONDON BOYS AND GIRLS 


portico in the square, or behind the heaped-up refuse of 
the markets; in every street in every quarter of the town, 
this unlucky young miscreant is hidden and ready, as if 
he had sprung from the earth—like armed men, from the 
dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus—to hold a horse, or to 
pick a pocket. These poor unfortunate lads are the over¬ 
looked outcasts of London, they are the overplus of infants 
that float into the streets from the doors of the gin palace, 
while their wretched parents are swallowing the horrid 
poisonous stuff they dispense in the hundreds of squalid 
feverish plague spots around and about London. These 
neglected children should be caught, like vermin, before 
contaminated, and put away in a house for infant 
castaways; once imbued with the vagabond life, they 
are generally true to their trust, and, as they grow, 
constitute the great amount of crime that is daily 
committed in this vast assemblage of human beings. 

The Multiplication of Vagabonds.— In the Whitechapel 
Union there are 188 lodging houses of the class to which casual 
paupers resort when in luck. These houses make up 5,337 beds ! 
On one particular day of inquiry, it was found that in the work- 
house at Whitechapel there were 1,013 paupers, of whom 320 had 
been admitted from nightly lodging houses within the district. As 
a matter of course, there is a perpetual accession to the ranks of 
London casuals, by migrations from the country, and a perpetual 
settling down into the most miserable state of pauperism from the 
ranks of those who through genuine misfortune have been once or 
twice relieved. 

The number of persons apprehended by the police under the 
Vagrant and Poor Law Acts during the year 1870, was 6,757 divided 
as follows :— 


Begging . 

... 3,472 

Destitute 

309 

Incorrigible Rogues 

43 

Disorderly Conduct in Workhouses 

... 2,329 

Other Offences . 

604 


The News Boy is another industrious little fellow; 
his importance as the bearer of the news of the whole 
globe sometimes makes him peremptory; but he is 





SOMETIMES GROW BOLD AND FALL INTO VICE. 105 

generally a sharp, good tempered, and intellectual little 
fellow. On the snowiest and frostiest of mornings, as 
well as on the brightest summer day, he is punctual to 
a minute; and by eight o’clock your breakfast table 
meets your view, not only laden with hot coffee, tea, 
hot rolls, and other early matin delicacies, hut your 
letters and newspapers also furnished for the breakfast 
table. Passing for the nonce the itinerant “ paper hoy,” 
the “doctor’s boy,” the “match boy,” the “roast 
chestnut boy,” the “ telegraph boy,” the “ errand boy,” 
and the “ printers’ devil,” which last genus gar con 
machinery is fast driving from his stool, come we to 
the Arabs of the town. 

London Girls. —We now come to the mere slips of 
girls that obtain their living as small traders. The su¬ 
periority of the female nature is here most evident, by the 
majority of young females adopting industrial callings, 
while the boys are prone to the more vicious occupa¬ 
tions. There are many ways in which girls can 
turn an honest penny. First, we may discover the 
“ fuzee girl,” then the “ paper girl,” the girls that 
“ clean your door steps,” “ fruit girls,” “ waarcress 
girls,” and the sorts of girls that go haymaking, or 
picking hops. There is a pretty occupation, however, 
that many adopt, and that is in selling pansies. Come 
we therefore to 

The Flower Girl. —Her occupation is generally 
in the busiest of thoroughfares of London from twelve 
to two or three, and again in the evening, with a store 
of very prettily composed bouquets for your button¬ 
hole. The charge is the universal penny, and the 
smartest of young gentlemen look smarter still when 
decorated with this little tribute from the basket of the 
humble flower girl. These industrious little feminines, 
sometimes grow bold, and fall into vice, but this is 


106 


THE LONDON CABMAN. 


seldom ; they get occupations in the markets for sorting 
fruit, pealing walnuts, shelling peas, or acting as trusty 
portresses in the neighbourhood. Their remuneration 
is the lowest that can he imagined—still they mostly 
preserve an honest nature, out of all this trivial occu¬ 
pation, and often settle in life as domestic servants, or 
as the consorts of the humbler class of street fruit-men. 


CHAPTER XYI. 

THE LONDON CABMAN. 

Amongst the numerous toilers and workers of the great 
metropolis, whose pursuits or avocations determine some 
marked peculiarity of character, to distinguish each 
separate class, we must not overlook the London cab¬ 
man. This is an individual whose habits and manner 
of life are singularly favorable to the cultivation of a 
species of practical philosophy, and the maintenance of 
particular views, in regard to the immense community 
of which he forms by no means an unimportant unit, 
and from whom he derives an unequal livelihood. 
Some of his opinions on these subjects are strange indeed, 
and will be best expressed in his own language. 

We will select yonder charioteer on the rank, who is 
somewhat more decently dressed than the majority of 
his class. Perched on the tiny skeleton seat of his 
hansom in a degage position, lie peruses the “ Daily 
Tell-a-cram,” the special organ of the democratic read¬ 
ing public. We call him to the pavement; his fellows 
with intuitive rapidity prepare to come also, doubtless 
imagining we require their vehicles. A sign of dissent 
checks their movements, and another gesture signifies 
to our hero, that his individual presence is alone re¬ 
quired. He descends from his seat with eager curiosity, 
and crosses the road to our side. We explain our 



107 


WORKING A CAB COMES ORK’ARD 

desire to obtain some information from him, and a con¬ 
venient tavern receives us both—his companions taking 
charge of his horse and cab in the meanwhile. 



“ Thought you wos a fare, sir, at fust. T’aint often 
































































































































































































































108 


THE LONDON CABMAN 


a gen’elman axes a cabman merely to have a drink, 
not that it’s less welcome for all that. Wot’ll I take ? 
Well, sir, arf a pint o’ mild ale and arf a quartern o’ 
gin in it;—dog’s-nose we call it,—won’t hurt a fellow. 
Thankye, sir, here’s your werry good health, sir ! You 
was axin how I likes my mode o’ life; you means 
cabbing it, I s’pose. Well, ’taint such a werry bad 
way of keeping the pot biling for my missus . and the 
kids at home—though it do come hard sometimes—as 
does many other ways of living in London, though 
workin’ a cab is really hard lines and worse wear. 
Many people thinks that a cabby has got nothing else 
to do but drive about and pick up the dibs easy-like; 
but that’s where they make the mistake, for they does’nt 
think o’ the hours we has to wait on those blessed 
ranks sometimes, afore we looks at even a bob. Is it a 
wonder, sir, that a fellow and a cabby too, rides rusty 
now an’ then ? when some bloke that is on’y dressed 
like a swell wants to do the poor cabby out of his lawful 
fare. Swear ’ow you will, right as you may be, it’s 
our well known hinsolence, and my swell walks off if 
you lets him. ’Taint much good goin’ afore the mag- 
gerstrates, who are all nails on cabby, and losing p’raps 
arf a day a waiting to be heard, with on’y the chance 
of getting one’s rights arter all; and many’s the tanner 
I’ve lost that way, and hoceans of redooced fares have 
had to be put up with in the same style. Oh ! yds, 
the night work do come cruel ’ard sometimes, specially 
when its cold, for, ’cepting when the plays and parties, are 
busted over on a werry wet night for if there’s no people 
about or wanting to go anywheres, and we’re out nearly 
through the night trying to make up the day’s expenses. 
That’s where working a cab comes ork’ard, and how 
cabby gets into debt with the owner, and goes home with 
nuffin in his pocket. ’Taint always like that, of course. 


LIKES LADIES AND FEMALES REST FOR FARES. 109 

e has our ups and downs like other hard-working 
folks, and that has to be looked for in course; but so 
long as the fares is reasonable and civil, and the perlice 
leaves yer quiet, or gets something better to do, we 
musn’t grumble I s’pose, for it’s open-air work, and 
that’s worth counting. We have farish times now and 
then, and our best days for business, is when the morn- 
in’s break fine, and the sun brings the people out with¬ 
out their rumbrellas, and then lets it come down hard, 
pouring rain in the arternoon, and ketches ’em, that’s 
the time for cabs ! We takes up and sets down as fast 
as you likes then, an’ the money comes rattlin’ in 
as quick, ’cos the fares don’t look so close to the 
change. We all like ladies and females best for fares, 
they looks best and they pays best—bless their hearts ! 
They either don’t know what’s to pay, and mostly gives 
what you axes, for fear of ’sputin’ the fare. Thankye! 
I will wet my whistle again, sir! But summer time’s 
the grand spec, sir. If your horse and trap is anyway 
decentish looking, races and regattas makes up a fust 
rate week. Why, I’ve been down to Epsom sometimes 
the four blessed days regular, not to speak of ’Ampton 
or Croydon, besides the Oxford and Cambridge or the 
Crystial Palace. You gets your grub—plenty of it— 
and good pay too. Wot do I think of the perlice? 
Why, sir, they’ve got their work to do, and if it’s a 
matter atween us alone, as man and man, we get on 
together all right; but the public, sir, the public is the 
horse that kicks and throws us out, and acourse every 
one is believed afore a cabby. I don’t think much of 
the public, sir, though we takes their money, and if 
you had to drive some as I knows on, you wouldn’t 
think much on ’em neether. There’s them members of 
Parlerment, they are awful stingy, wants two or three 
mile out o’ yer for a shilling ; and then there’s loryers 


110 


THE LONDON CABMAN. 


and city swells who always axes for your ticket if 
there’s a word about the fare. Ah ! we’ve a many 
wexations, sir, in our line ; why I’ve only just been 
readin’ in that paper that a gent left in my wehicle this 
mornin’, that some cove has been writin’ a letter to 
reccomend that cabbies should wear liveries like foot¬ 
men—blarm ’em, as if there war’nt enough that we have 
to put up with besides what we have to go through. 
Shall I make a fortin of cah-driving ? Have I ever 
heard on it bein’ done ? No, sir! not I nor anyone 
else. If we can make two ends meet, it’s as much as 
we can expect. When you see a retired cabman living 
on his yearnings, let me know, an’ I’ll show you a dead 
moke, sir ! which no one has ever seen. No offence 
but there’s a fare now, an’ my cab’s fust. Good day, 
sir, thank ye kindly for the drink and your tip.” 

London Cabs and the Small Pox.— A “ fashionably dressed 
young woman” was brought before Mr. D’Eyncourt at the Mary- 
lebone Police Court on Thursday, September 28th, 1871, charged 
with “ unlawfully exposing a person suffering from contagious 
disease in a public conveyance, contrary to the statute.” It appears 
that a policeman on duty ot the entrance of the Hampstead Small¬ 
pox Hospital saw a cab drive up about dusk, from which descended 
two ladies, one of whom he stated, on being questioned, denied that 
either she or her companion had small-pox, and said they were 
going in to make inquiries after a friend. Soon, afterwards, how¬ 
ever, when one of the ladies returned from the hospital alone, the 
vigilant constable made further inquiries, and discovered that it 
was really a case of small-pox. He then sent the cabman to the 
police station to have his vehicle disinfected, and reported the 
particulars to his inspector, at whose instance proceedings were 
taken. The evidence against the accused was perfectly clear, and 
showed the case in a very aggravated light; one point being 
the evidence of a doctor at Chelsea who had attended the patient, 
and who certified that she was suffering from small-pox, at the 
same time telling those who had charge of her that the parish 
authorities would send an ambulance, if required. As for the 
cabman, he declared that he was not told what was the matter with 
his “ fare ” and that he lost the use of his cab for three days during 
the process of disinfection. The magistrate ultimately fined the 
defendant 40s., besides 30s. compensation to the cabman; a fortnight’s 


LONDON BETTING MEN. 


Ill 


confinement in the House of Correction being the alternative of 
default in payment. Should cholera make its appearance in the 
metropolis, the “ Dreadnought” Hospital Ship is to be appropriated 
t°ao 6 rece P^ on patients. During the small-pox epidemic, of 
1,CL1 sufferers admitted to the ship, 1,018 were discharged as cured, 
and only three died. 

Thirty-five cab standings were appointed during 1870, giving 
increased accommodation for 238 cabs; making a total of 454 
standings for 3,668 cabs. 9,940 reports have been made by the 
police against cabs and their drivers, 1,537 having been rejected on 
inspection as unfit for public use. The number of articles left in 
public carriages and deposited at the Public Carriage Office has 
greatly increased. In the year 1869, 1,912 were deposited, and in 
1870 the number was 3,258. This satisfactory increase is due to 
the alteration in the system of rewards to the drivers laid down by 
the Secretary of State on the 1st February, 1870. Cabmen are not 
the worst offenders; 124 persons were run over and killed in the 
streets during the year, of whom eleven were killed by cabs, and 
113 by other vehicles ; 1,919 persons were injured or maimed, of 
whom 429 were maimed by cabs and 1,490 by other vehicles. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

LONDON BETTING MEN- 

Betting Men and Commission Exchanges.— 
During the last two or three years, there have been 
regularly open in London for the accommodation of 
betting men, establishments called Commission Ex¬ 
changes, where those who are partial to the desperate 
game of gambling on horse-racing may for a trifling 
subscription get a chance, from a run of good luck, to 
become possessed speedily of a good deal of other 
people’s money, or what is far more likely, lose what 
th*y own themselves. 

Betting men form a very curious portion of the 
community. They are more subjected to the ups and 
downs of life than any other class. To-day they may 
be seen going about shabby, victims of every land of 



112 


LONDON BETTING MEN. 


privation. To-morrow a horse on which they have 
laid very long odds, 50, 60, or even 100 to 1 in “fivers,” 
wins, or, as they term it, “ pulls off” a race. Then 
with hundreds in their pockets, they go about well 
attired and live in clover. 

The instances of such successes are certainly few; 
hut occasionally they do occur, and that is well enough 
known ; consequently it is quite enough to encourage 
the hopes of others who daily attend Commission Ex¬ 
changes, sacrificing all considerations of life to the 
carrying their all (if it be only a few shillings), every 
twenty-four hours to stake in this great lottery, under 
the hope of catching Dame Fortune at some time in a 
merry mood. Thousands drag on a wretched existence 
by this maddening infatuation, while one in a hundred 
now and then finds an oasis in the desert. 

Commission Exchanges are always situated in ob¬ 
scure streets, or yards, or courts, or other places of 
retirement. They are usually kept open from about 
ten or eleven in the morning to one, * two, or three in 
the afternoon. An open court is selected for all opera¬ 
tions, if one can be procured sufficiently capacious for 
the accommodation of two or three hundred persons at 
a time. A transverse piece of wood or paling is erected 
in front, with a door on each side, by one of which the 
visitor enters, and takes his departure by the other. 
This is called the “ gate,” at which a man stands to 
see that no interloper effects an entrance; for Commis¬ 
sion Exchanges are conducted on the principle of 
TattersalTs, or the Stock Exchange, to which admission 
is allowed only to members or subscribers—the sub¬ 
scription being a guinea a week for “ book-keepers,” 
or those who give the odds, and a crown, or (as is the 
case at the last started of them), half-a-guinea a year 
for the general public, or those who take the odds. 


THE AUTHORITIES ARE DOWN UPON THEM. 113 

The book-keepers have stands, which they place 
round the sides of the court, each having his allotted 
station. Here he exhibits the prices or odds which he 
will give on the several horses in a forthcoming race. 
Those who take the odds, whether it be in shillings, 
half-crowns, or pounds, make the payment to the book¬ 
keeper ; if the horse which they have backed wins, 
they receive back their money with the odds they laid. 
All is fair dealing; and the sole objection (though it is 
a very serious one), which can be raised against the 
system is, that it is the encouragement of a pernicious 
and debasing vice. 

Being so, the authorities are “ down ” upon betting 
men, resolved to put an end to them. For a number 
of years they drove them from pillar to post, now from 
Bride Lane to Farringdon Boad, then from open spaces 
in Farringdon Boad, to under the oak trees in Hyde 
Park, then altogether from the Park itself, till, two or 
three years ago, a very clever fellow, having raked up 
all the Acts of Parliament against betting which he 
could find in the British Museum, hit upon the expe¬ 
dient of affording betting men, what he deemed a 
“lawful ” meeting place, by the institution of a 
“ Commission Exchange.” 

The first was started on Saffron Hill, and might 
have continued to this day in solitary glory, had not 
the book-keepers, shortly after its establishment, been 
charged double for their entrance fee, whereupon they 
took umbrage, and got somebody of their order to start 
another, called the “ Alliance,” in Whitefriars, at the 
original charge. 

The police watch these Commission Exchanges very 
closely; and that some appearance of business other 
than horse-betting, is carried on as a blind will be seen 
from what was done on the establishment a few months 

H 


114 


LONDON BETTING MEN. 


ago of the latest Commission Exchange, in Blackfnars, 
called the “ New City Club.” 

It was put forward as affording to the members all 
the advantages of a West-end Club, where city gen¬ 
tlemen and others desirous of meeting to transact 
business would find every facility and accommodation in 
conducting their correspondence, and remitting or 
receiving parcels. It was given out that the “ Club ” 
was supplied with all the leading London and provincial 
newspapers, with the other conveniences usually found 
in such places, such as guide books and directions, and 
the power of sending and receiving telegrams. Its 
situation was described as being conveniently in the 
centre of the city, within a minute’s walk of the termini 
of the Metropolitan, and the London, Chatham and 
Lover Railways, and of the Thames Embankment, 
and the Steamboat Piers. Only the initiated could 
possibly have known for what purpose it was really 
intended. 

Now and then the police make raids upon these or 
similar establishments, when a regular scrimmage 
takes place, the betting men using their fists, in which 
they are generally great adepts, and the police their 
staves, till noses bleed and heads are broken. The 
police, however, always get the mastery in the end, 
and walk off the whole party to the police-station, 
except those who are fortunate enough to break their 
way through the throng of constables by fighting and 
knocking down their assailants, or leaping clean through 
window-panes. Sometimes on twenty or thirty betting 
men being thus apprehended, there has been found 
upon their persons upwards of a thousand pounds in 
notes and specie, showing that the betting game, if 
ruinous to some, is very profitable to others. 


115 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

LONDON RAILWAYS—A LONDON STATION-OLD 
LONDON COACH OFFICES-STREETS IN THE 
OLDEN TIME, AND LONDON IN THE WINTER. 

London Railway Stations.— There is a constant 
roar of activity and bustle going on around us in our 
many railway stations, in which the parties engaged 
in it may even be too active themselves, in the same 
pursuit, to be impressed with the novelty of the scene. 
That is, the arrival of the “heavy train” into the 
grand terminus of our great railways. Every ‘ ‘passenger ” 
is bent on some particular object—anxiety for luggage 
—meeting a friend—care for the little ones—personal 
parcels taken inside for security—the few minutes be¬ 
hind time—or, doubts of catching another train at 
a distant station. These are a few of the occupations 
that make many unobservant of the turmoil passing 
around them, and yet each may form an important 
part of the picture. The platform is deserted, save by 
a few of our faithful “ knights of the portmanteau,” in 
their green suits and badges, and in one minute the dis- 

























































































116 


A LONDON KAILWAY STATION. 


tant roar—ihe whistle—the rush—the scream—the 
sudden cessation of sound—and then the instant appear¬ 
ance of a population. Hundreds upon hundreds, all 
hurry, all hustle, all stir, while from the extremest points 
hundreds yet pour forth, with eyes bent upon all 
points and parts of the station, cabs, friends, luggage, 
or country cousins—some smiling, some talking, cabmen 
bawling and shouting, the buzz of many footsteps, the 
rushing with massive luggage, claimants for heavy 
packages, “the knights in green” flinging out your valu¬ 
ables as if they were granite, instead of a decent and 
modest composition of leather and British oak, or the 
more resistless pine, which with the steam that has not 
quite given over its hiss—form an accumulation of 
babel sounds, that to a mere looker-on, is simply con¬ 
fusion and utter riot. As by a wave of Prospero’s 
wand, the station is empty, and every soul is on his 
way to home, and the “ Fire-fly” or “ Dragon,” like 
faithful engines take their long trail away and refresh 
themselves for some heavy return journey of a two or 
three hundred miles run. Now, indeed, tranquillity 
reposes. But no;—suddenly echoes are again awakened 
by the arrival of an empty train. Passengers appear 
rapidly, the pay offices are besieged—some affording 
the worst accommodation in the world—money is 
rattling, porters are hurrying everywhere with boxes 
and contents that have taken weeks in selection, doors 
open and slam again, enquiries from the uninitiated, 
the rush at the refreshment bars, the restlessness of 
everybody, dear friends concentrating all their love and 
kindness at parting, lamps flaring, the heavy tramps 
upon the roof, the closing of the iron covers, amidst 
tarpaulins, cords, straps, hells, steam whistle, and a scam¬ 
per from the inseparably improvident, good humours, 
bad humours, cross tempers, and amiability, lovely girls, 


LONDON RAILWAYS. 


117 


all pleasurable in tbeir fresh and handsome faces, and 
young gentlemen equally agreeable. Old women at the 
last gasp of inquiry, and the rude navvy in his uncouth 
shuffle, sportsmen and regular travellers, cool as an ice¬ 
berg, the commercial patterns of placidity, the newsboys 
doubly impressive, the post office travellers bent only 
upon business. Now there is an incessant want of 
something from every one, again heavy doors are 
slammed, and bolted with terrifying rapidity, the large 
bright bell is more importunate, the guard sounds his 
silver pipe, the engine shrieks, and smoke and steam 
fiy up amongst the sparks. First, second, and third 
class, a hundred strong are frightened, contented, or 
delighted, and, in a moment when all are resigned and 
ready, they sink down to an impressive chilling silence. 
The train has rushed away, the place is empty. That 
vast assemblage has in a moment, vanished, dragged 
out on the long iron road with the last wild shriek, of 
the iron horse, and left not a wrack behind. 

London Railways. —The Metropolitan Railway 
is a mighty underground undertaking, by which in a 
few minutes, the heart of the city is reached with 
comfort and safety from Hammersmith or Notting- 
Ilill, Kensington or Brompton, and nearly all round 
London. Travelling seems to have reached its 
climax, when what was half-a-day’s journey twenty 
years ago is done now in a quarter of an hour, 
for it requires but some such interval of time as that 
between shaking hands with friends in parting at the 
Mansion House, and doing the same with others on meet¬ 
ing in Camden Town. The Metropolitan Railway service 
appears to be capable of almost indefinite extension. 
At any rate, its limits have not yet been reached, and 
directors appear as earnest as ever in finding out fresh 
routes for their trams, and new spots where stations 


118 


LONDON RAILWAYS. 


may be erected. There are now four companies 
which are exclusively devoted to the Metropolitan rail¬ 
way traffic—the Metropolitan, the Metropolitan District, 
the Metropolitan and St. John’s Wood, and the North 
London. The Metropolitan is engaged to provide 
nearly two millions for further works, and the Metro¬ 
politan District and the North London nearly half-a- 
million. They have purchased from the Corporation 
a large site of land fronting the Holhorn Viaduct. In 
a few months a railway station will be built on the 
level with the Viaduct as large as the Charing Cross 
Station, and it has been suggested that this would form a 
suitable position for a good commercial hotel, if built 
and conducted upon moderate terms. 

There is scarcely any part of London or any of its 
outlying districts which cannot now be reached by rail, 
and by trains that are arriving and departing every ten 
minutes. Most of the principal railways that reach 
from the most distant parts of the country have exten¬ 
sions through the metropolis. Thus the South-Eastern 
has an extension from its old terminus at London 
Bridge to one in Cannon Street, and another at Charing 
Cross. The Great Northern, the Great Western, and 
the Midland communicate with the Metropolitan, and 
so does the London, Chatham and Dover. But it 
matters not which we take, the Greenwich or Black- 
wall, Croydon or Richmond, Dover or Brighton, South¬ 
ampton, Liverpool, Manchester or any other, the hues 
of the whole are connected together in the most re¬ 
markable manner. 

We will suppose the reader to he accompanying us in 
a short trip on the South London, or Junction Railway, 
that connects the South-Eastern with the Great 
Eastern. Commencing in Shoreditch, it cuts through 
a densely populated mass of buildings, where house 


LONDON DESERTED AT NIGHT. 


119 


after house presents in the upper storeys, ranges of 
windows totally unlike those of common dwelling- 
houses, being wide, lattice-like windows, which throw 
light upon the labours of the Spitalfields weavers, 
though the rapidity of our movement prevents any 
distinct cognizance of the purpose to which these wide- 
windowed rooms are devoted. 

The railways have not only put the population of the 
kingdom in free communication with the metropolis, 
but have enabled large numbers of men of all ranks to 
settle around its borders. The central parts are con¬ 
verted into large warehouses, railway stations, public 
offices, and magnificent shops, which are thronged 
during the day, but are deserted during the night by 
their occupants. Men are driven from London by the 
high rents of the houses and are attracted out¬ 
side by the charms of the surrounding country, with 
which the railways put them in easy communication. 

There was once a shoe-black on London Bridge who kept a dog 
to bemire the boots of foot passengers and so bring business. 
Whether it is in gratitude to the hatters and tailors who advertise 
on their hoardings, we cannot say, but the fact is certain that the 
Bailway Companies keep their metropolitan bridges and viaducts 
in a state very good for trade. The drip from these arches is 
generally impregnated with iron, and is peculiarly destructive of 
the beauty of new hats. The Lambeth Vestry, perhaps moved by 
the destruction of the roads caused by this dripping, has resolved 
to take proceedings against the London, Chatham, and Dover 
Bailway for a nuisance, so far as it exists in that parish. The 
public ought to wish them success, but we pity the tailors and 
hatters, as we shall have to pity the house decorators and painters 
when London consumes its own smoke. 

The Old London Coach Offices are still in 
memory, full of romance, and the old yards full 
of pleasant recollections. Who can forget the comfort¬ 
able looking office filled with parcels ; the square court 
yard, around which the inn extended in sleeping apart¬ 
ments for the numerous travellers; the long galleries, 




LONDON COACH OFFICES. <& C „«< page. 




















































































































































































































































































































































































































THE OLD COACHMAN AND GUARD. 


121 


with their quaint balusters and rough hewn upright 
oaken pillars of support; the pretty laughing cham¬ 
bermaid ; the roguish boots ; the busy stablemen 
beneath; the farmers’ carts and horses ; the farmer’s 
wife on pillion ; the fifty men and boys, all busy 
in the yard ; and then the four handsome steeds 
harnessed to the smart old coach, all polish and clean¬ 
liness, bright as a new pin, and the admiration of all. 
The coachman, the guard (always excellent fellows), 
the passengers, insides and outsides, box-seats, roof or 
dickey, what a straggle for dignity of position in those 
days ; why to ride through a town, drawn by four 
magnificent horses, on the box-seat of one of the old 
coaches, with horn blowing, and all the inhabitants out 
to gaze, elevated you to the dignity of an emperor. 
The polish of the harness; the pride of the horses; the 
glory of the grooms ; the dignified passengers, free as 
the air—no locking in or out then—are all memories 
of the olden time that we fail to realise in the faintest 
degree in any modern railway travelling. All is ready 
for the start; the yard has a goodly number of specta¬ 
tors, and many friends of the passengers; the horses 
prance in their delight ; the coachman takes the 
ribbons ; the grooms remove the rugs, giving at the 
same moment the last smooth touch to the well-dressed 
animals ; the words “ All right,” and away they go, the 
envy of each beholder, and the glory of the delighted 
traveller. The old London coach offices, the dear old 
spots hallowed with the pleasant thoughts of home, 
school, friendly visits, sweethearts, and country farms. 
Even the old mail coach with all its cumbrous works 
and awkward axles had its romance, its many glories, 
and its triumphs of travel. The royal red ; the scarlet 
and gold liveries ; the high bred steeds; the four-in- 
hand worthy of regal guiding. These grand old 


122 


THE OLD LONDON COACH OFFICES. 


lumberers are banished from the earth, never to return; 
yet, a quarter of a century since, they were one of the 
London sights, starting from the Post Office each night 
at eight p.m. to every point of the kingdom, with thou¬ 
sands of horses ready at every point to carry them oil 
Brilliant in color—radiant in light—-triumphant in 
dignity—stately in regal consequence, they were deemed 
worthy of an anniversaiy, and each year on the birth¬ 
day of the Sovereign, they appeared in procession, 
varnished and dressed to the highest degree of polish ; 
steeds, all equal to the great “Eclipse;” model drivers; 
elegant harness ; whips, the daintiest and the longest; 
and multitudes to look and to admire all the postal 
grandeur. It was the Post Office in state : the climax 
of the machinery of St. Martin’s - le - Grand. This 
ancestral splendour was snuffed out in an instant by 
steam. Parcels were delivered many hours before the 
mail coach could make its appearance, and its greatest 
speed fell into derision, in contrast to fifty miles an 
hour. The first Royal Mail Coach was made by Mr. 
Vidler, under Government contract, in 1784, and ceased 
its avocation in 1838. Ten years after we had the 
wonderful innovation of the penny post, and now we 
have the halfpenny card, facilities worthy of the 
progress of the age, though we are yet persecuted with 
a piece of barbarism which barricades all our post offices 
an nine p.m., and all day on Sundays. The pillar post 
refuses MSS. and newspapers. Consequently in the days 
of steam and the telegraph, we have this ridiculous 
hitch, of value to no one, and annoyance to the many. 

London Streets in the Olden T ime. —A number 
of very elderly thoroughfares yet remain in the me¬ 
tropolis, monuments of our forefathers’ snuggeries, 
where they were constructed with such compact¬ 
ness, and so much neighbourly contrivance that at 



London streets in the olden time. (See next page.) 



































































































































































































































































































































































124 


ELDERLY LONDON. 


the topmost storey friends could shake hands with the 
opposite resident. The ancient Britons of two or three 
hundred years since had no idea of ventilation ; their 
ingenuity in building each storey of the house more 
prominent than the other was perhaps an example in 
the “ economy of space/’ that may have matured up 
to the present, and breaks out now and then in all 
kinds of manufacture, from a travelling hag to the 
Great Eastern steamship. These old London houses 
were, in 1668, modern ; a century after they became 
ancient; fifty years more and they were ugly, and now 
they are merely quaint, which simply means, obtrusive 
if not dangerous. Our forefathers, in the construc¬ 
tion of London streets, literally spoiled London—their 
evident notion was compactness. They had no field 
glasses to carry them out a few miles beyond and all 
around St. Paul's, but must needs huddle all our city 
streets into the cosiest of nooks and in the most com¬ 
fortable companionship that could be imagined. Of 
course the principal “traffic” was for pedestrians; carts, 
waggons, omnibuses, hansoms, landaus, wagonettes 
and broughams were unknown. Elizabeth rode in 
state on a pillion; and fifty years after there were 
only thirty vehicles in all London. The city thorough¬ 
fares are all three-fourths too small. Cheapside, the 
Poultry, Lower Thames Street, St. Paul’s Church 
Yard, Newgate Street, Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill and 
the Strand are all obstructive, and the money loss of 
time, in progress to the centre of the hive, amounts to 
thousands of pounds per day. At four p.m. it will take 
you above an hour to ride from Charing Cross to London 
Bridge Bailway, which is still the style of our fore¬ 
fathers, as it took them—when London Bridge was 
the only one across the Thames—two hours to journey 
from the Exchange, to their mansions in the Kennington 


OLD LONDON STREETS. 


125 


Road ; and even then pickaxe and spade were carried 
in the “ Salisbury Boot ” in case any obstruction 
occurred in passage through the badly paved streets. 
In many places the London thoroughfares appear to 
have been formed one house after another, at any 
angle, and without any consideration of future require¬ 
ments. Narrow in some parts, and then bulging out 
in utter wastefulness of space, again to be choked up 
in another portion of the roadway. “ Traffic ” was 
certainly not understood in those days ; the word only 
applied to trade — and most assuredly the London 
streets, built on the north and south sides of Cheape, 
were merely intended for dealing purposes of any and 
every kind—or as a verb, to buy and sell. There is 
not one street leading to the Guildhall but is of this 
nature, and everywhere around and about the Strand 
the streets are of the same class. Many of the olden 
London streets have been swept away to make room 
for the New Law Courts, and the two churches, St. 
Mary’s and St. Clement’s are to follow in the wake. 
The London streets of the olden time are principally 
in situations that are the most desirable for the com¬ 
merce and prosperity of the kingdom, and are so hedged 
in on every side, that extension is almost out of the 
question, while removal would be to curb the industry 
and commerce of the capital. 

London in Winter.— London, in the bleak months 
of the year, resembles pretty closely a bevy of beauties 
dressed for some stately ball; their magnificent forms 
are arrayed in satins, and silks, and diamonds; but the 
dark coverlet presently covers them in from the piercing 
frost, till in due season they cast their outer garments and 
shine in all the radiance of splendour and enjoyment. 
In winter London has its beauties veiled in fogs, and 
east winds besiege our tight little island. There is 


126 


LONDON IN THE WINTER. 


however a swing of festivity in the numerous homely 
parties, and in the theatres. Music, and the quantity 
of literature that is produced also contribute to our 
enjoyment, but the parks are deserts by comparison. 
Rotten Row has really fallen into decay, and the re¬ 
tainers of the nobility remain carefully housed, till the 
spring—with its ethereal mildness—returns again. 
Regent’s Park, the Crystal Palace and the Zoological 
menagerie, are all in a state of coma , and unless for the 
anticipations of glorious Christmas, with its troops of 
friends, its geniality, and its merry-makings, London 
would indeed be a cheerless region. But the old fellow, 
crowned with the coral berry and the pd&rl, wakes us 
up, and begins a round of entertainment that serves us 
for weeks and weeks to come. Snow and ice will 
follow in their season, and then the million skaters can 
revel in their glorious pastime.^The gold and glitter of 
London has now settled in the “ East,” and my Lord 
Mayor is the wintry monarch. State banquets and 
processions occur long before “my Lord Mayor’s Bay,” 
but on the 9th of the dreariest month in the calendar— 
let the elements conceal him from our view, or pelt 
him pitilessly with rain or snow—there is my lord’s 
cavalcade, brimful of grandeur and exultant in its 
many bands of music. Carriages and horses are mag¬ 
nificent ; the liveries are of gold and delicate fabric; 
soldiers are martial in their bearing, and the ancient 
knights represent the chivalry of a bygone era, with 
fidelity and courage. The Public Companies put on 
their holiday attire, and flaunt their gayest flags ; water¬ 
men, too old for the modern memory to trace their 
origin, and firemen herioc and resolute, follow in the train. 
The cavalcade is as truly regal as any monarch of the 
city could desire. The most honored man in all London 
still bears a great and noble dignity, that, as happy 


FIRE ! FIRE ! FIRE ! 


127 


and contented Britons we are all delighted to uphold. 
In wintry London, the beautiful Parliament Houses 
becomes a ghostly structure, and are only visited by 
ghmpses of the moon. Our palaces are deserted, half 
of the West-end mansions are tenantless ; and thus is 
London utilized by trade. Its commerce extends through¬ 
out space upon which the sun never sets, and the mag¬ 
nitude of our exchanges gives a stimulus to industry that 
increases the wealth of other lands. Winter or summer 
this constant whirl of commerce is in its most rapid 
motion ; and as the sparks fly upwards by enterprise, 
chance, or good diplomacy, so do we live and prosper. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

LONDON VARIOUS.—FIRE BRIGADE—ADVERTISING- 
AUCTION KNOCK-OUTS—IRISH IN LONDON- 
LONDCN SNOBS. 

London Fire Brigade. —Fire! fire! There is no more 
thrilling alarm, or one that can vibrate in the heart 
more than that of fire. The sky is illumined, men 
shout, engines of the brigade scatter down the streets, 
and there is tramplings of many feet as the crowd 
rushes towards the scene. There the burning pile 
lights up all its surroundings which present fantastic 
and weird aspects in the blaze of fight and gloom of 
shade. Engines one after another arrive and set to 
work as if by magic. There could not be picked a 
smarter body of men than our London Fire Brigade. 
In courage, coolness, quickness, and discipline, they are 
all that a general in warfare would desire. They 
quickly perceive the weakest point where to maim 
their hissing and roaring enemy, and there they are— 
in spite of all dangers—while the flames seem to lick 



128 


LONDON FIRE BRIGADE. 


their glittering helmets. The roar of the crowd, the 
shrill whistle of the steam fire engine, the hissing, 
smoking, and crackling blaze, panting and subdued 
awhile, then belching out with redoubled fury form a 
scene of intense excitement. A human cry is heard 
for succour. Joe Ford, the hero who lived amongst us 
unawares but yesterday, ascends amidst the ringing 
cheers of the spectators. Four lives the gallant Joe 
snatches from the burning mass. Undaunted he ascends 
again. Five he saves; yet another cries. Joe is up 
again, but now a cry of horror comes from the surging 
crowd beneath, and ghastly their faces look in the 
glare as they cry “ The escape is on fire.” Bravely 
does he battle with the fire,—one more rescued. Six 
human lives are saved ; hut, alas! for poor Joe—the 
fiend, as if in revenge of its noble foe, holds him while 
it licks around his body. He struggles frantically in 
the meshes of the hot wire-work of the escape. One 
more plunge, and Joe breaks away—away from the 
enemy whom he had so gallantly fought;—but only to 
death. Then Joe was borne away, the fire was put out, 
and the hustle of the great city went on again in its 
rumbling course. But in a few days something stops 
the way in Holborn. There is a vast concourse of 
people, and a long procession of mourners which move 
slowly and solemnly. Engines, carriages, and hundreds 
of firemen in a long line were seeing poor Joe to his 
last resting-place in Abney Park. The scorched coat 
and battered helmet upon the coffin was a touching 
spectacle; nor was it alone the widow who cried, or 
the fatherless little ones,—for many sob came from 
many an intrepid heart as the Dead March sounded, 
and they gazed on all that was left of him who had 
those noble qualities which make men heroes, and 
nations great. The Metropolitan Fire Brigade has 


THE BRAVE FIREMAN. 


129 


fourteen engine-stations, two floating engines, four 
steam engines, and twenty-seven manual engines, 
under the command of Chief Superintendent Shaw. 
The vast public importance attached to the Brigade 
may he estimated by the fact, that during the last year 
727 fires occurred in London. Fires are chronicled in 
the daily newspapers by one of the oldest members of 
the press, who is known by the sobriquet of “Fire 
Fowler.” His accounts are preferred for their general 
accuracy. 

Advertising in London—Newspaper Streets 
and Stations. —The spirit of advertising is a phe¬ 
nomenon of the age. Scarcely any branch of com¬ 
merce is above or below it. It flourishes in full 
vigour in the crowded cities of the Old and the 
New World—it travels from London to the Anti¬ 
podes, penetrates into the deserts of Africa, and 
even affixes itself to the Pyramids of Egypt. It is 
made the medium of proclaiming to the world the 
wealth of wonders possessed by a Barnum as well as 
inculcating the platform of the popular statesman; and 
to enterprises, be they little or great, it is the life-buoy 
that sustains them in the ocean of competition. In no 
city in the world is this more strikingly exemplified 
than in London, where it would be difficult to form 
any approximate idea of the millions which are yearly 
expended in inviting publicity. It is not alone to be 
considered the enormous revenues that accrue to the 
world-read Times , the sheets that boast of “ the largest 
circulation in the world,” or the multitudinous news¬ 
papers in the great city which depend principally upon 
advertisements. Every railway station is studded with 
elaborately-painted advertisement boards; every hoard¬ 
ing around every building flames with recommendations 
to the public of every human requirement from steam- 


130 


ADVERTISING IN LONDON. 


engines down to cough-drops. Where the last new 
novel is published, and where the highest price is 
given for waste paper; a meeting in aid of some 
famine-stricken people, and a grand hall at Willis’s. 
Certain cures for corns, and flowing locks for the bald. 
Consumption cured in a week; artificial teeth better 
than natural; iron safes that hid defiance to fire and 
thieves. Happy indeed would it he if all these glaring 
promises could he fulfilled, and then we might accept 
the invitation printed on the pavement every six yards 
in our walk to go and see Halliday’s grand play, and 
it must be a had one if we thought it not the best ever 
on the stage. 

London Auctions are very numerous, and although 
a great deal is said about dealers attending sales, it 
would be impossible for auctioneers to sell the amount 
of property they do without their assistance ; for they 
can, and do in many cases, give a far greater sum for 
goods than the general public. Many of the London 
Auction Looms are well established, and conducted in the 
most respectable manner. The “ knock-outs ” are not 
peculiar to London, they abound everywhere, they are 
regular traders in one particular branch of merchan¬ 
dise, be it “ old books,” “ articles of vertu,” china, 
plate, pictures, horses or houses ; they attend nearly 
all the sales in London and the suburbs, and the mem¬ 
bers of each trade form themselves into a company 
banded together for their own interests, and for the 
purpose of keeping their own judgment of the value 
of property by auction entirely to themselves. They 
do not interfere with the sale, as is sometimes supposed. 
They let the general public bid as much as they please, 
and then is the opportunity for them to display their 
judgment. Knowing what the article is worth in the 
trade—which, if the property is valuable, will fetch more 


LOUDON AUCTIONS. 


131 


than the general public will give—they can outbid the 
last public bidder, and secure the property to themselves. 
They may be a band of six, ten or twenty individuals 
present, who, after numerous bargains are secured, 
betake themselves to their favorite “ public/’ and there 
settle, in the most business manner possible, who is to 
become the ultimate possessor by a “ knock-out auc¬ 
tion.” The article, say a picture, is put up at the 
purchased price by any one party, acting as auctioneer, 
and the original cost of, say ten pounds, may terminate 
by bidding up to twenty or thirty. The amount 
above the cost is placed in a bowl to form a fund to be 
equally divided amongst all present. Supposing the 
party is composed of six persons, three or four may 
wish to have another “ knock-out ” for the same article, 
and those whose judgment is satisfied retire, and the 
auction proceeds in the same manner, the surplus 
being again divided equally amongst the remaining 
parties, and so it goes on until it falls into the hands of 
the one in the company who can sell it for the most 
money. Property bought in this manner from an 
original public bid of a small amount, has often reached 
to a hundred pounds; and it is a startling fact that 
upon one occasion a pair of valuable ornaments was 
sold by auction for sixteen shillings, and afterwards 
realised, at a knock-out, the enormous sum of four 
hundred pounds. In a recent sale of the property of a 
deceased clergyman, a quantity of old copy-books regis¬ 
tered by the sapient porter as waste paper, was actually 
sold as such, and realised the fancy price of eight shil¬ 
lings, which, being found to contain valuable etchings 
and profound literary composition, was purchased and 
re-purchased again in a knock-out, for one hundred 
pounds. These cases are by no means rare, and 
while they display the ignorance of the auctioneer, 

i 2 


132 


KNOCK-OUTS AND AUCTIONEERS. 


it shows the impolicy of one man having to superintend 
the disposal of every description of property; and every 
species of handiwork, stick or stock, is liable to this 
sacrifice. If goods sold by public auction are not 
properly allotted and catalogues forwarded to the best 
buyers, the property must, as a matter of course, be 
sacrificed. The fault lies not with the knock-outs, but 
the auctioneer not being the right man in the right place. 
The “ knock-outs ” are, therefore, no hindrance to 
fair and honorable competition; they are sage, wise 
men, who, having made one branch of trade their 
peculiar study, are thus enabled to preserve the value 
of property for their own benefit. The real pests of the 
auction room are some of the touting fraternity, well- 
known to many-as “ commission brokers.” They offer 
their services to the inexperienced visitor, to purchase 
any article or articles required at a much less sum than 
the parties could buy for themselves. This assistance 
is sometimes accepted ; and very often the property is 
run up to an enormous sum, not only to increase the 
commission, but for the benefit of the owner if the 
property is put into the sale by a dealer; this, of course, 
is an understanding between him and the commission 
broker. 

The Irish in London. —The Irish live in various 
parts of London, apart and amongst themselves, carry¬ 
ing with them the many virtues and vices of their 
native land, and never becoming absorbed in the nation 
to which, for years, they may be attached. Swindlers, 
thieves, and tramps may surround them, but do not in 
general affect them. Tom Malone still renews, upon 
English ground, his feuds with the O’Lcarys, com¬ 
mencing not within the memory of man; and some 
Bridget OTIafferty pays Ellen O’Connor for evidence 
given by her grandfather against the rebels of ’98 It 


THE IRISH IN LONDON. 


133 


would be a curious investigation for the philosopher how 
far the interest and progress of this most gallant and 
interesting nation have been affected by what, in the 
absence of a better definition, we shall designate the 
absence of merging power. Nor is it less curious, that 
whilst the Irish preserve their national characteristics 
as steadfastly as do the Jews, that they have the 
quality of absorbing other nations, for we find that the 
English who settle in Ireland, not merely acquire the 
brogue, but become more Irish than the Irish them¬ 
selves. Ip sis Hibernis Hiberniores is as true now as it 
was in the days of the poet Spencer. The “ Irish 
Hudibras ” (1682) thus humorously describes an Irish 
wake :— 

“ To their own sports (the masses ended) 

The mourners now are recommended. 

Some sit and chat, some laugh, some weep, 

Some sing cronans, and some do sleep ; 

Some court, some scold, some blow, some puff. 

Some take tobacco, some take snuff. 

Some play the trump, some trot the hay, 

Some at machan, some at noddy play ; 

Thus mixing up their grief and sorrow, 

Yesterday buried, killed to-morrow.” 

The London Snobs. —There are at least three classes 
of the genus homo to be met with at every public enter¬ 
tainment, and at almost every corner, who obtain 
neither respect nor sympathy. To wit, “The Cad,” 
“ The Gent,” and “ The Snob.” The Cad is the vulgar 
goth who breaks statues, and destroys, wantonly, valu¬ 
able relics that cannot be replaced. He is the college 
booby that promotes “Town and gown riots,” and 
smashes his landlady’s furniture to swell the amount of 
his weekly bill. The Cad is, therefore, simply contemp¬ 
tible. “ The Gent is an empty-headed harmless lout 
that dresses to the utmost point of color and vulgarity. 
He talks loudly at concerts and theatres, if he has, by 


134 


LONDON SNOBS. 


chance or impudence, crept into a private box where 
ladies may be placed whom he had accidentally met 
in the course of his sponging tours, and presumes upon 
his flashy appearance again to address them. The 
“ London Snob ” has some of the vices of the previous 
two classes, but he is simply a dolt. Blessed by 
chance with an abundance of the circulating medium, 
he forthwith sets himself up for a gentleman, talks 
slang and visits music halls. He is insolent to those 
around him, and his money is generally his passport 
from a good thrashing. He leans against pillars, or 
counters, in a display of large jewelry, orange or green 
tie, low crowned hat, groomy trousers, and gaudy 
colored vest. He addresses people by their Christian 
names and is familiar with waiters, for whom any 
cognomen will suit his purpose, and brags of his com¬ 
panionship with certain leading and public characters 
who would despise him. At a concert he parts his 
hair, which imparts an idiotic expression displaying 
a vast quantity of shirt front, and sparkling studs. 
His coat is thrown back, and he loungeth or rather 
sprawls on his seat. At a private party he affects 
music by turning the leaves of the song for the 
young lady in her ballad, and talks boastfully at 
supper of the delicacies before him. He has no 
accomplishment beyond forwardness and by that 
offensive qualification has made the acquaintance of a 
dozen families during the evening. Having nothing 
in the world to occupy his time; neither music, paint¬ 
ing, or literature, he is simply a bore, who talks of the 
weather, and retails the incidents he chances to over¬ 
hear, to another party as his own. He has no idea 
when he is hindering you in your vocation and destroy¬ 
ing valuable time. In fact the Snob is one of those excres¬ 
cences who float on the surface of society by ignorance, 


THE LONDON POOR. 


105 


obstinacy, or a well-filled purse; albeit he has not 
always money to recommend him. He is never liberal; 
if be dispenses his coin it is for his own comfort 
or display, or perhaps for some grand smash, 
“ when a lot of fellars were half-tight,” and tried to 
reduce the “ hall of dazzling light ” to rather a gloomy 
one. He is, however, rarefy seen at the police court; 
yet he knows every man in the force. He “ can’t be 
bored with chaps what write,” and, altogether, he is the 
simplest and most useless piece of human workmanship 
humanity can be pestered with in the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury. 

CHAPTER XX. 

THE LONDON POOR. 

“ Come,” said I to my country friend, “from the scene of 
highest civilisation, the Parliament of Westminster 
and see the habits of Westminster in her lone garrets 
deep cells, and reeking gin shops.” We had not far 
to go, for round by that Abbey where all that is ill& 
trious in England sleeps, were huddled together streets, 
lanes and alleys oversurging with a never-ending tide 
of human misery. “ They have not,” said I to my 
oountry friend, “managed this giant pauperism as yet 
in their councils at Westminster, and its gaunt form 
appears at their very threshold. They have had their 
Poor Law and their philosophers, their philanthropists, 
and their host of humanity quacks, but there it is still, 
you see, poisoning childhood, and not permitting youth to 
live within its dismal regions.” My friend sought the 
causes, but I told him that their name was legion; 
over-population, vast disparity in the distribution of 
worldly wealth, and above all, although they possessed 
many virtues, the reckless habits of the poor them¬ 
selves. “There is more reckless extravagance,” said I, 


136 JOHN ROEBUCK AND THE WORKING CLASSEo. 

“in any garret there, than in the best appointed parlor 
in Belgravia. Every meal is taken as if it were to be 
the last meal, and every penny is spent as if hundreds 
of pennies were sure to follow. They have been too 
much petted, to tell the honest truth, of late this 
labouring poor has, and the ladies of Belgravia have 
appeared to adopt them in place of their discarded lap- 
dogs. The member for Buckingham treats of their 
social position with the heartless ease of a practised 
anatomist wdio glories in a ‘ nice case.’ His knife is 
always in hand, but the cancer you see still remains. 
The only public man in England who ever told the 
working poor of England the truth, was John Roebuck 
of Sheffield, and for telling this truth the working 
people of Sheffield took the liberty of turning the said 
John Roebuck out of Parliament at the very earliest 
opportunity. They—the working poor do not bear to 
hear of their rude and blasphemous speech, the black 
eyes of their wives and the broken limbs of their 
children, the shoes taken off the infant for drink, and 
the last piece of decent furniture broken in the fury 
created by that drink. They do not like to hear of the 
poor worn-out being sitting by the empty grate with 
sick child in hands, counting every weary hour of the 
clock, whilst the object of the experimental philoso¬ 
pher’s tender solicitude and the old lady of Belgravia’s 
exhaustive love is to be found in a scene like this, the 
pleasantest tippling shop in Westminster. 

“From such a scene the heroic subject of legislative 
solicitude will hasten home to the empty grate, the 
crying child, and the half dying wife,—and thrash 
them all round—brute that he is—for not having a 
hot supper ready, out of nothing, for the philosopher’s 
pet and the dear old lady of Belgravia’s modern idol. 
The next day brings the stereotyped six months for the 



MR. PEABODY AND THE POOR OF LONDON. 137 

hero of the eighteenth century, the parish workhouse 
for the worn-out wife and starving child.” “Surely,” 
said my country friend, “the London working men are 
not all as this man ?” “ Oh no; God forbid! I can show 
you the majesty of struggling labour, the well tended 
children, the small selection of good and sound books, the 
decently clad wife, plants brought from country parts and 
blooming outside the window, the man himself—the 
bread-winner for all—looking every inch like home, and 
not a mark of the soul and body killing gin shop at all 
about him. His waking and sleeping thoughts are 
about his home, and he neither wants the dreamy 
philosopher, the quack politician, or the old lady of 
Belgravia to think about him. He thinks for himself, 
for the sober English workman is the most independent 
being beneath God’s sun. He has many difficulties to 
contend with, and the increasing golden tide of wealth 
and civilization has in many instances washed away 
his domestic hearth. The system begins to fail, and 
cannot by any equitable principle, long continue.” 
“After all,” said my country friend, “neither through 
my boozy Parliament at Salisbury Court, nor your 
great national assemblage at Westminster, do you 
suggest any remedy for those deplorable social ills.” 
My answer was, “ The remedy belongs to the next 
generation!” 

The magnificent gift of the late Mr. Peabody does 
not after all meet his present requirements. His spirit 
revolts against its cold discipline, nor does he like a 
common staircase, however polished, where he may be 
jostled against by the idle or worthless. Its expenses 
are, moreover, beyond his means, and upon this ground 
many of the apartments in the building are occupied by 
the attendants of shops and lawyers’ clerks. So far, 
then, as the real working man is concerned, the gift of 


138 


LONDON CO-OPERATIVE STORES. 


Mr. Peabody—to use an American pbrase—“has fallen 
through,'” and labour still wants a legitimate home for 
its true resting-place. The independent working man 
looks upon a model lodging-house only in the light of an 
expensive workhouse. The condition of the London 
poor would be much better improved by them being 
more distributed in small sections all over the metro¬ 
polis, each residing in or near its own particular place 
of occupation. The question will shortly have to be 
answered:—What good has Mr. Peabody’s gift done 
for the poor of London ? 

London Co-operative Stores. —There never was a 
more misapplied term than the word “co-operation” 
is, in the sense in which it is used here. In fact, it is 
an apt and truthful illustration of the Latin aphorism, 
“Lucus a non lucendo” When first these institutions 
were established they were nominally set up for the 
benefit of the working classes who, by becoming 
subscribers, were supposed to get goods of every 
description at the lowest cost, and upon the ready 
money principle alone. In time their greatest patrons 
were found, not amongst the working classes, but amongst 
the nobility, and coronets, and not the influx of the 
artizans, crowd the entrances of those doors. This is 
an abuse in itself, for hundreds of highly respectable 
and honest shopkeepers in the West-end have been 
thrown out of business and utterly ruined by this 
system, as well as the numerous body of assistants they 
used to employ. Moreover there is no new principle 
in political economy established in these stores ; because, 
when the subscription is taken into account as well as 
the payment of the ready money, the whole mystery of 
cheapness is solved. The surprise of the nobility and 
gentry in getting things at these stores, as they allege, 
so much cheaper, is simply childish. Let us, for in- 


A DOWNRIGHT ROBBERY. 139 

stance, take the matter of tea. A West-end tradesman 
sends in his account once or twice in the year, and, 
necessarily in his charges, has to compute for the time, 
out of which he was out of pocket. Now, by paying at 
the stores ready money, he may get for 3s. per lb. what 
was hooked for 4s.; but, if he had paid ready money to 
his family grocer, he would have got for this 3s.—without 
the expense of a subscription—a similar article. There 
is another injustice connected with these stores, that is, 
the amalgamation of all trades within one establish¬ 
ment—grocers, shoemakers, hatters, tailors, linen- 
drapers, etc., all form a chaotic commercial class quite 
opposed to the old English system of English dealing. 
On the 31st of December, 1870, there were no fewer 
than 902 of these societies in existence, and from the 
returns of 740 of them consisting of 249,113 members, 
we find that 42,314 had been admitted during the year, 
while 21,964 had withdrawn. The cash received for 
goods sold during the year amounted to £8,202,466. 
The disposable net profit realised from all sources 
during the year was £555,435, the dividend declared 
due to members £467,164; to non-members £16,523; 
and the amount allowed for educational purposes 
£3,775. Some of the managers of these societies re¬ 
ceive £1,000 to £3,000 per annum. We do not 
desire to introduce the stringent system as to trades 
which at one time—nor was it a bad time—existed 
in the City of London; but, upon the other hand, 
we look upon this wholesale amalgamation of all 
classes of commerce as a downright robbery to those 
persons who, to the acquirement of each separate 
business, paid their r^ey and gave the best of their 
early days. 


140 


LONDON CHEAP BEDS 



LONDON CHEAP BEDS. 

With the intention of seeing the inner life of a cheap 
lodging-house, I sought the good offices and advice of 
an urbane inspector of police in one of the Western 
districts of the metropolis, and to his courtesy I am 
indebted and gratified, by the desired insight into the 
working arrangements of an abode, where an admission 
to comfort and repose was rated at the moderate charge 
of threepence per night. 

It was very dark and rainy, the chimes had just 
rung out the hour of ten as I followed my conductor, 
a constable in plain clothes, towards the house he had 
selected for inspection, and which was located in one of 
the numerous off-streets that bisect the wide and noble 
roadway leading from Westminster Abbey to the 
regions of Pimlico. 

Turning off from the main thoroughfare adverted to, 
we soon arrived at the spot, which was indicated by a 
large gas lamp overhanging a wide doorway, inscribed 
































































I 


THE DOORKEEPER DEMANDS “THRUPPENCE.” 141 

with the word “ Beds,” in large black letters. Happing 
a peculiar knock, the door was instantly and noiselessly 
opened, by some unseen agency, and we at once entered 
and found ourselves within a short passage, closed before 
us by an inner door, which seemed to lead directly to 
the interior of the building, for a confused sound of 
conversation and low laughter reached us where we 
stood. 

In the wall at the side of the inner door there was 
an aperture similar to the pigeon-hole adapted to money- 
takers at a theatre, and to this opening, from whence 
streamed a ray of light, the guide bent his head to 
speak to the invisible occupant. The individual within 
appeared to know the interlocutor well; for, after a few 
cuestions in anxious whispers had been answered by 
the disguised constable, he stood erect and beckoned us 
cn to follow him through the inner door, that opened 
with a catch under the control of the janitor—who 
certainly had his hands full, for, during this pause, two 
men had passed in before us, after paying for their 
admittance in obedience to the monosyllabic demand of 
“ Thruppence ” from the door-keeper, receiving each 
a numbered ticket in exchange. 

We now had to pass along a very narrow dimly- 
lighted corridor of whitewashed brick sides, until we 
came to a flight of stairs that, we were informed, led to 
the upper dormitories, and in one of which, we shortly 
found ourselves. It was a spacious lofty room, all 
whitewashed, with a clean scrubbed floor, containing 
about a dozen beds, which were merely square frames 
of iron fitted with straw palliasse and stuffed bolsters, 
fairly clean cotton sheets and a horse rug, each bed 
being separated, or enclosed, from the rest by a sort of 
thick canvas screen whilst a T bracket for the gas jets 
illumined the whole apartment. Some two or three of 


142 


LONDON CHEAP BEDS. 


the beds, to judge by their closed curtains, were already 
occupied; their denizens could he also heard snoring in 
concert. But, in one couch immediately under the 
light, we found a decent but gaunt-looking country 
youth mending the most important article of his 
clothing—his trousers—whilst he had got between the 
sheets to keep his limbs warm. He merely glanced at 
us in a sort of shamefaced manner, as we passed on and 
looked through the other rooms, which scarcely dif¬ 
fered from the first in their details; and, again descend¬ 
ing the stairs, we went to the end of the corridor before- 
mentioned, and approached the sounds of talking that 
had struck upon our ears when we had first entered the 
establishment. 

Pushing open a door at the end of this passage, we 
entered a large, well lighted and lofty apartment, 
with clean whitewashed walls and ceiling, warmed to a 
most agreeable temperature by a huge fire in a large 
hospitable-looking grate, with boilers, griddles, pans, 
and baking ovens all complete, and to assume by the 
unaccountable savoury smell proceeding therefrom, its 
culinary capacities were now being fully tested. Over 
the fireplace was hung a placard with the printed 
clauses of the “ Lodging House Act,” countersigned 
by the Chief of the Metropolitan Police, for the regu¬ 
lation of the house. At the side of the apartment were 
disposed a series of flap-cupboards, each niunbered to 
correspond with the tickets of admission apparently, 
and seemingly destined for the reception of such 
articles of value, or tools and implements belonging to 
the inmates, whose safe keeping might require the 
security of a lock. Various domestic or kitchen appli¬ 
ances, such as teapots, jugs, basins, and tubs were to be 
seen on every hand ; whilst over head, on clothes lines 
of packthread knotted together, sundry varieties of 


THE MOTLEY ASSEMBLAGE. 


143 


under-linen and hosiery, most of the pieces in a very 
forward state of wear and dilapidation, were hanging 
up to dry, and hats, caps, and sundry garments, or 
working aprons of every trade, found convenient pegs 
about the walls and pillars of the apartment, whose fur¬ 
niture otherwise consisted of long, rough wooden tables 
and benches that were fixed in the paved floor to serve 
for the use of the motley assemblage of living 
humanity that had found shelter and comparative 
comfort within the walls of the establishment on the 
night of our visit. 

Our appearance and entry has created hut a momen¬ 
tary attention, and a narrow, searching look into the 
features of every one assembled here, has settled into 
an aspect of indifference on the part of the disguised 
policeman, for he has recognised no one who might be 
“ wanted.” 

Talking, eating, writing, stitching, cooking, washing, 
or other duties occupy most of the inmates, some 
of whom, by their nonchalance of manner and ready 
aptitude, are certainly habituated to this mode of 
life; and the mixture of grade and presumed avoca¬ 
tions amongst them is remarkable. There is one man, 
in particular, whom we espy, whose looks are anything 
but favourable as an index to his moral calibre, so far 
as you may consider a low-beetled brow, a bullet-shaped 
head, and a broken nose, whilst his close-shaven face 
and short cropped hair, argues strongly for a recent 
residence somewhere, where the pleasures of life had 
been subordinated to the enforcement of both hard and 
personally unprofitable labour. He smokes the stump 
of a pipe, like others around him, and whom he 
regards generally with a surly, sneering expression. He 
is a jail-bird just liberated, most assuredly ; and our 
guide confirms the supposition in an unobserved whisper; 


144 


LONDON CHEAP BEDS. 


as he points out another party to us, a bilious-looking 
young man with pimply face, dressed in seedy black, 
wearing spectacles, and the chin tuft of hair commonly 
known as a “ goatee,” who is a well known begging- 
letter writer. A merry-looking young fellow, whom a 
companion has styled as “ Pots ”—some potman out of 
place, probably—is singing cheerfully whilst he blacks 
a pair of boots ; and next to him, near the fire, listening 
with apathetic air to the song, is a depressed mechanic 
who watches the due toasting of the red herring that 
must form his supper. At the table, amongst others, 
we see a round-faced youth with straight hair, whose 
flat-rimmed and tipped hat and Newmarket coat, lead 
us to assume that he is some cashiered clerk. He is 
copying something from the papers into a letter, probably 
it is an application for a place in answer to an adver¬ 
tisement. The rest of the assembly are equally 
engaged in something or other, or in conversing upon 
various subjects; their individual aspirations, their 
different grievances, or their ruined hopes, most 
likely affording them the subject matter for discourse. 

We have seen enough, and are turning to depart, 
when a nudge from the constable directs our attention 
to an individual who is washing—not potatoes, like his 
next neighbour, but linen—in a large bread pan. (See 
Illustration.) His appearance and occupation strongly 
provokes the risible faculties, despite the idea that sheer 
necessity alone, could account for his presence here. He is 
sadly out of place, for he has had evidently some pre¬ 
tensions to be considered a “swell,” and his vest and 
trousers are well cut and of superfine cloth, whilst his 
well trimmed moustache, hang-down pointed whiskers, 
and neatly divided flaxen hair, together with the half¬ 
melancholy look of disgust on his face, contrast most 
ridiculously with the task before, and the surroundings 


LONDON PAUPERS AND CADGERS. 


145 


about, him. It is a shirt he is washing—his only one, 
to presume by his naked arms and throat; and the 
potato peeler at his side is slily jeering at him in an 
undertone—between his closed teeth, for he is also 
smoking—but in such a quiet manner that the victim 
cannot, or dare not take offence, for fear of attracting 
notice. 

The objects and purposes of these houses are un¬ 
doubtedly beneficial and useful, and they are all under 
the control and observation of the police, such super¬ 
vision being rendered necessary, as much for the main¬ 
tenance of their general cleanliness and order on behalf 
of deserving persons in distress, as well as to watch 
over the miscellaneous gathering of unknown or doubt¬ 
ful characters, and also to track down and seize those 
luckless beings, whose wants have been met, by proceed¬ 
ings that have rendered them personally amenable to 
the laws, for all sorts of persons and various types of 
the social community are to be commonly found herded 
together in the institutions devoted to the furnishing 
of “ cheap beds.” 


LONDON PAUPERS AND CADGERS. 

The Cadgers’ or beggars’ slang is a style of language 
arranged on the principal of using words that are 
similar in sound to the ordinary expressions for the 
same idea. “ S’pose now, your honour,” said a “ shol- 
low cove ” who was giving lessons in the St. Giles’ 
classics, “I wanted to ask a codger to come and have a 
glass of rum with me, and smoke a pipe of ’baccer over 
a game of cards with some blokes at home, I should 
say : ‘ Splodger, will you have a Jack-Surpass of finger 
and thumb, and blow your yard of tripe of nosey-me- 

K 




146 


THE POOR OUTCASTS OF SOCIETY. 


knocker while we have a touch of the broads with some 
other heaps of coke at my drum f ” 

Casuals. —A common expression amongst persons with 
money is, ‘‘Where shall I dine ?” but how sadly does 
that contrast with scenes which can he witnessed nightly 
outside our police stations—where in a line huddled 
together are to be seen the regular tramp, the beggar, 
and often the thief, and, sad to relate, the hard-working 
man who has left his wife and family behind him in the 
country, and walks to London to seek employment. 
These have not only asked the question “ Where shall 
I dine?” but, “Where shall I sleep?” and the man not 
used to such a life shudders, while the fact is brought 
forcibly to his mind that the hours devoted to repose 
must be passed in the foetid atmosphere and disgusting 
associations of the casual ward. These are waiting to 
undergo an examination by a stern policeman, who 
enquires as to their history, and if a satisfactory answer 
is given, gives them an order for the nearest workhouse, 
to which these poor outcasts of society and dregs of 
humanity at once make their way, to be regaled with 
their pound of bread, and refreshed with a bath, and 
what is more to them, a bed; to work their two hours 
in the morning by way of payment for their bed and 
supper, and then begin again the dull monotonous starv¬ 
ing life, and drag their weary limbs the next night to 
another parish. 

It is easy to distinguish from these the regular casual* 
and the man reduced to such a position through loss of 
work and other misfortunes, who holds down his head 
fearful to be recognised, and inwardly shudders at the 
thought of being considered a rogue and vagabond, and 

• * “ A Night in a Workhouse.” The writer of this article in the Pall Mall 
Gazette, 1866, says :—“ The regular casuals squatted up in their beds, smoked 
foul pipes, sang horrible songs and bandied jokes so obscene as to be 
absolutely appalling.” 




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CASUALS WAITING AT THE TOLICE STATION. 






































































































































































































148 


NOTORIOUS LODGING-HorPKS. 


recoils with disgust from the others, who, used to this 
life, treat it jestingly and amuse one another with coarse 
oaths and profane language, often to the delight of 
their companions in distress, who are smoking their 
dirty clays, and awaiting their turn to go before the 
much dreaded “ copper,” as they are pleased to 
designate the official whose duty it is to grant them 
permission to go to bed, and there forget their troubles 
in the blessed oblivion of sleep— 

“ Sleep, tired nature’s chief restorer.” 

The late Major Hanger accompanied George the 
Fourth to a Beggars’ Carnival, and after being there 
some time the chairman, Sir Jeffery Dunston, addressing 
the company, and pointing to the then Prince of 
Wales, said, “ I call upon that ere gemmen with a shirt 
for a song.” The prince, as well as he could, got excused 
upon his friend promising to sing for him, and he 
chanted a ballad called, “The Beggar’s Wedding; or, 
the Jovial Crew,” with great applause. The Major’s 
health having been drank with nine times nine, 
and responded to by him, wishing them “ good luck 
till they were tired of it,” he departed with the 
Prince, to afford the company time to fix their 
different routes for the ensuing day’s business. They 
have a general meeting in the course of the year, and 
each day they are divided into companies, and each 
company has its particular walk ; their earnings vary 
much, some as much as five shillings per day. There 
are many lodging-houses in London, and perhaps the 
most celebrated and notorious lodging-house in St. 
Giles’s was kept by Mother Cummins. 

Rfcfntly a man was charged for attempting to defraud the 
parish of St. Luke’s, Chelsea It appeared that the prisouer went 
to the workhouse with a police order, and when asked if he had 
any money upon him said, *• Yes,” and gave up fourpence; had 


LONDON THIEVES. 


149 


he had threepence-halfpenny only, he would not have been charged. 
Mr. Woolrych asked how that was; the possession of threepence- 
halfpenny appeared to be venial, and that of fourpence punishable. 
The officer said he believed it to be an accepted rule that a lodging 
could be obtained for fourpence, not under ; and hence a man with 
threepence-halfpenny could not get a decent lodging. Mr. Wool¬ 
rych said beds were obtained for less than fourpence in the Mint, 
and in Flower and Dean Street. He had seen written up, ,£ Good 
accommodation for travellers, 2^d.; hot water and a watchman all 
night.” It seemed very odd to him. It was explained to the 
magistrate, that the night before he was in Mount Street, and when 
put to the stone-yard said he should not work, he could get a 
better living by begging. 

An Old Dodge.—A wretched, dirty-looking man, was charged 
at Guildhall, with being drunk and disorderly, and creating a dis¬ 
turbance in Bishopsgate Street Within, and also with shamming 
fits. The prisoner, it appeared, had been to this Court seven times. 
He was the man who declared that he never had worked in his life, 
and he never would. He was now sentenced to seven days’ 
imprisonment with hard labour. 

At Nos. 9, 10, and 11, Shire Lane, houses lately pulled down fo r 
the New Law Courts, was known as “ Cadgers’ Hall.” In one of 
the rooms of the middle house were found several bushels of bread, 
placed there by the distressed beggars. 

Seventy-six Years Life in a London Workhouse. —A man 
named William Smith, an inmate of the Bethnal Green Work- 
house, died lately at the age of 103 years. The deceased went 
into the house when he was only twenty-seven, and he had re¬ 
mained there ever since. When he was admitted he appeared 
to be thoroughly worn out and destitute, but in two years he 
had so far regained his strength as to be made special messenger 
to the clerk, and he always said it was the kind treatment he had 
received in the workhouse which had prolonged his life. 

6,562 deaths occurred last year in the twenty-nine workhouses of 
the metropolis, and 413 inquests were held. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

LONDON THIEVES. 

The domestic habits of thieves are all pretty much 
alike; fluctuating between the prison and the hulks, they 
exhibit the usual characteristics of men engaged in 
dangerous enterprise; they mainly pass their time, when 
not at “ work,” in gambling, smoking, and drinking. 




THE LONDON TRISON VAN, 
























































































































































THE CARGO OF CRIME. 


151 


and in listening to the adventures of their companions. 
Some of the most notorious thieves, pickpockets and 
cracksmen in London have a kind of club established 
for the purpose of making arrangements for what 
is termed working the theatres, concerts, places of 
worship, omnibuses, and railways, also for the purpose 
of furnishing the means to fee counsel to assist those 
who require legal assistance. The secret language of 
the London thieves is made up from the cant used 
by the ancient beggars, such as “ Can you roher 
Romany f” (Can you speak cant ?) ; “ What is 
your moneheer ?” (name); “ Where do you stall 

in the huey ?” (Where do you lodge in the town?); 
“ Oh, I drop the main toper” (get out of the high road) 
“ and slink into the hen” (lodging-house) “in the back 
drum” (street); “Will you have a shant o’ gatter” 
(pot of beer) “ after all this dowry of parny f” (lot of 
rain) ; “ I’ve got a teviss” (shilling) “ left in my dye” 
(pocket). Until quite lately there was a double house in 
Shire Lane called “ The Retreat,” which the thieves ran 
through, and so down Crown Court escaped into tho 
Strand. 

The Prison Yan. —A very prominent feature daily 
so the prison van, and the care taken of our prisoners, 
as a recent order from head quarters enforces each 
station to keep its prisoners until they are sent for, and 
in no condition whatever is a prisoner to walk to tho 
“ Court.” Bow Street in the afternoon presents a very 
lively and animated appearance in the neighbourhood 
of the Police Court. This is caused by a crowd of 
idlers and friends of the prisoners waiting the arrival 
of the police van. Judy facetiously describes the 
overcrowding of a prison-van by a ragged little urchin 
shouting out, “Will any gemman ride outside to 
oblige a lady?” The group principally consists of 


152 


THE PRISON VAN 


slovenly women, dirty children and disreputable-looking 
young men Mouchards. By-and-bye tbe dingy van 
arrives for its cargo of crime and tbe crowd now stop 
their quarrelling and ribald chaff, everybody wishing to 
take a last look perhaps, for some time, of their friends. 
Each one is carefully guarded to the door by a police¬ 
man, and a voice may be heard crying out, “Keep your 
pecker up, George” or “Arry” or, “There he is, ’ow 
long ’ave yer got ?” Answer, “ Remanded.” Perhaps a 
mere lad young in years hut old in sin may be seen 
springing lightly into the van and turning round to his 
companions holds up two or three of his fingers to de¬ 
note the sentence he has just received; judging from 
his manner one would think that he preferred being in 
prison to having his liberty; again may be seen the 
abandoned woman step half-ashamed into the van and 
seemingly glad to escape the eyes so strongly fastened 
upon her. But the saddest sight of all is a respectably- 
dressed young man, perhaps lately holding a good posi¬ 
tion who has been convicted of forgery, or appropriating 
to his own use his master’s money, obliged to face that 
crowd, and a sob may be heard in the midst from his 
mother, or may be his wife or sister, as he holds his hand¬ 
kerchief before his face and draws his hat over his eyes, 
hurrying from his cell to the van. The papers con¬ 
firming the sentences are handed in to the conductor, 
the door is slammed too, a shout of “Right, House of 
Correction,” is heard, and the van moves slowly off 
leaving the wretched inmates to reflect on their mis¬ 
deeds, and to some not so far advanced in the path of 
crime, to repent. 

An Overcrowded Police-van. —Some amusement 
was caused recently at the Marylebone Police Court, 
by an objection to the vehicular arrangements of the 
police authorities. A man who had just been fined 


CROWDED BEYOND PROPER LIMITS. 


153 


sixty shillings for a series of assaults upon a stable- 
keeper and a policeman, said that before leaving the 
court he would like to direct his worship’s attention to 
what he regarded as a great abuse. He (the defendant) 
was a proprietor of hackney and stage coaches, and if 
he ventured to carry one above the prescribed number 
of persons he was pulled up and fined. Now that 
morning, when he was driven to the police court in the 
police van, there were no less than ten persons crowded 
in beyond the proper limits of the accommodation. 
Was there no law to pull the policemen up for this P 
(laughter.) People might laugh, but it was a good way 
to spread contagion, if any such influence happened to 
be about. Mr. D’Eyncourt made no reply, but joined 
in the general laughter raised by the novel objection. 

London Thieves at the Cattle Show. —There 
are various ways of fleecing the greenhorn, and our 
engraving will give an excellent lesson to the unso¬ 
phisticated. The attention of the young gentleman 
has been called to the inspection of a very handsome 
young bull; and his knowledge—which is nothing— 
flattered by the thief in the disguise of an honest 
countryman, fixes the thoughts of the verdant youth 
solely on the subject before him, while he is relieved of 
his watch at the same moment. It looks like impro-. 
bability with the surrounding company, but the frank 
and intelligent volunteer is also a rogue in disguise. The 
watch is passed to him, and from thence to the female 
thief in the rear, an honest-looking countrywoman, 
who moves off unconcernedly, and who would be the 
last person in the world to suspect. Amongst the 
London thieves these are the vilest and most detestable 
brutes to encounter. They are like snakes, full of 
venom and poison. Their very look is contamination, 
and against these abominations we warn our many 







154 LONDON THIEVES AT THE CATTLE SHOW. 

provincial readers. But if they are attacked, let them 
scotch the vipers in their path, or watch them closely 
and give instant notice at the police office within the 
building. 



A Thief’s Opinion of the Laws of England.— 
A meeting was held at the sign of the “ Nimble- 
hngers,” in Rosemary Lane, by the London thieves 
and pickpockets. Bill Soames having been called to 














































































155 


a thief’s opinion of the laws. 

the chair, proceeded to take a view of thieving from 
the earliest period down to the present time, observing 
at some length on the antiquity of the custom, which 
was coeval with property itself. What were called 
honest men must live, however, as well as prigs; it 
was but fair they should, and laws were accordingly 
invented for their protection. He did not object to 
laws; he approved of laws ; no rogue who knew his 
own interest would object to laws. Were it not for 
laws, every man would be on his guard, and would 
take care of himself, and instant punishment would be 
inflicted on the detected thief; but under laws, he 
meant such laws as those of England, when caught in 
the fact, how many chances of escape presented them¬ 
selves to the thief. A word, a letter, a slip of the 
pen in framing the indictment, prove a loop-hole for 
the prisoner’s escape. These and a thousand others 
were the chances in favour of the detected thief. 
Now and then punishment overtakes a thief, and it is 
well that it should do so ; were it not for the laws, all 
men would be thieves, and then what would become of 
the profession ? Why, it would be overrun, over¬ 
stocked, like the law, the Army, the Navy, and the 
Church. Occasional punishments, therefore, were like 
high duties to certain trades : they secured a sort of 
monopoly to the adventurous, and deterred the small 
fry from embarking in concerns above their ability. He 
concluded by stating that what with the police, the gas, 
and the newspapers, a thief’s business was not now 
what it was formerly. 

Confessions of a Burglar. —A convict named 
Caseley was called and examined before the Lord Chief 
Justice and a Special Jury in the Court of Queen’s 
Bench, Guildhall, February 14th, 1866, in a matter 
vf a warranty on the sale of a safe, arising out of 


156 


CONFESSIONS OF A BURGLAR 



THE SIGNAL THAT THE POLICE ARE AT HAND 




















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































CONFESSIONS OF A BURGLAR. 


157 


the great Comhill burglary, February 6th, 1865. 
He appeared an intelligent young man, and gave bis 
evidence with remarkable clearness and the most amusing 
coolness. He stated that be bad been sentenced to fourteen 
years penal servitude, and now came from Millbank to 
give evidence. On the night of Saturday, the 4th of 
February, 1865, be and four others went to the shop 
of plaintiff, and two of them besides himself went into 
the house, by the side door under the archway in Sun 
Court. It was ten minutes past six o’clock in the evening. 
The three first went into the second floor—the one 
above the floor over the shop, aud they remained there 
until twenty minutes to eight o’clock, when they received 
a signal that the foreman had gone. (A laugh.) They 
then went down into the next floor—Sir Charles 
Crossley’s—the one just over the shop. They there 
opened the safe. (A laugh.) For some hours afterwards 
they remained quiet and did nothing. They remained 
there until about 12 o’clock at night. At twenty minutes 
past 12 they began work, and first got into the tailor’s 
shop, and were in it the whole of Sunday morning. At 
five minutes to 3, on the afternoon of Sunday, they got 
into Mr. Walker’s shop. They first got into the back 
shop from the tailor’s room, by cutting away the ceiling 
and the flooring. One of the men went with witness 
into Mr. Walker’s shop—taking sundry tools, crowbars, 
and other things. They had to go out again, however, 
directly, for they received a signal that the police were 
coming round. Afterwards they had another signal to 
go back into the shop. They then tested the safe to 
see whether they could break it open “under the disad¬ 
vantages under which we were labouring.” (Much 
laughter). “ Testing ” it meant trying it with a little 
wedge to see if it would be likely to give way. They 
found that it held the wedge—whereas, if it was able to 




158 CONFESSIONS OF A BURGLAR. 

resist pressure the wedge would fly off, and so they found 
it would answer. They found that they must kneel down 
in order not to be seen by the police, who were round every 
nine minutes. “ They did their duty/’ said the witness, 
44 no blame attaches to them. Every time they came 
round I had a signal, and had to kneel down to avoid 
being seen by the police, and had to stop our work. At 
last we found the safe 4 give,’ which we were rather 
surprised at, as a good safe ought not to have yielded 
so soon. We then knew that we could get the safe 
open, and not long after we had it open. It did not 
take above thirty-five minutes, and out of that time 
several minutes should be deducted for the time we lost 
when the police came round. At a quarter to four we 
were up in Sir Charles Crossley’s office washing our 
hands. (Much laughter.) We only had to use two 
instruments, though we had others with us. We 
were miles away at twenty minutes to five. We 
have experimented on safes before. Upon one oc¬ 
casion it took seven hours before one gave at all, 
and we then tried what we call 4 unlawful’ means 
—that is, tools which we could not use in a burglary. 
(Great laughter.) Another took six hours to open. Two 
of us purchased two of the safes to experimentalize 
upon, and we succeeded upon one after seven hours and 
then by unlawful means—that is, with tools which 
could not be used with detection, as they made a noise. 
They were bars which had to be knocked in. That was 
returning back to old means; quite the 4 old style.’ 
(Laughter.) The other safe was opened in six hours, 
with the best sort of 4 lawful burglars’ tools,’ including 
an iron bar 5ft. long, jointed in several pieces so as to be 
carried in a small case. A good safe would send a wedge 
out; a bad one let it remain in, and that showed it could 
be opened. The wedge remained in this safe (the one in 


CONFESSIONS OF A BURGLAR. 159 

question), and they then saw it could be opened when 
the wedge held ; then a bar was put in to release the 
wedge, and then another wedge, a little larger to release 
the bar, and then another and larger bar to release the 
wedge. These bars, however, would not open the safe, 
they were only used to get what we call the ‘ alder¬ 
man ’ in. (Roars of laughter.) That is a ‘ head bar,’ 
which would open any safe. The smaller bars were 
called ‘ citizens.’ (Laughter.) These names were used 
to avoid the real words; it would not do to be heard in 
the streets talking of crowbars. (Laughter.) In this 
case the wedges only went in two or three times, the 
bars eight or nine times. In the other instances the 
‘ alderman ’ was used, which was able to open any 
safe made, unless their was a slight alteration. But to 
this safe the ‘ alderman ’ was not used; it was not 
required. While he worked one of his ‘ mates ’ was 
sitting upstairs in Sir Charles Crossley’s armchair to 
give signals by a string, corresponding with the two 
men outside. One was to see if either Mr. Walker or 
any of his people came back. The other gave notice 
when the police were coming by walking past the shop. 
The other of the two men with him was half way 
through the hole in the floor handing him the tools. I 
did the work. (A laugh.) I knew the whole family 
of the Walkers; I had been looking after them seven 
weeks, night and morning. (Laughter.) I had been 
in Sir Charles Crossley’s office several times before, and 
opened his safe and found £28 in it, which we would 
not take, as we did not want to rob Sir Charles. We 
did so on the night of this burglary, lest he should 
laugh at us (laughter), and so we took the tailor’s clothes 
for the same reason, not the value of them. (Roars of 
laughter.) Some of the men ■with me were mere ‘ inter¬ 
lopers ’—men called in on an emergency. (Much 


160 


CONFESSIONS OF A BURGLAR. 


laughter.) They concocted the burglary because 
they knew that all through the month of January 
the police did not look through the shutter holes; 
but on this night the policeman did do his duty, 
and the result was that he had to work kneeling. The 
posture of kneeling and the constant interruptions from 
the police made it, of course, more difficult, yet it was 
all over in about half an hour.” In answer to the 
Lord Chief Justice, the witness said he had been 
brought up as a sign-painter, not as mechanic; but he 
could maker a better safe, he said, than any safe now 
made, and he could open any safe that was made. The 
Lord Chief Justice.— It is- a pity you did not turn 
your talents to better account. The convict (with great 
quickness).—It is a pity the police did not let me. 

It is impossible to convey an idea of the readiness, 
quickness, clearness, and coolness of the man’s replies. 
His examination was listened to by a crowded audience 
and a large number of the Bar, with the deepest 
interest, and the sentiment universally expressed was, 
“ What a pity such a man should have been a thief! 
He could have attained success in any walk in life.” 
He was evidently a man of superior abilities, and, 
originally, one would say, with good qualities of 
character. 

Perhaps the most dangerous class of people in 
London are the London swindlers and sharpers, who 
have undergone a sort of classification. The following 
is a list of rogues of various descriptions that beset the 
unwary daily in London:—Swindlers, who take out 
licences for mock auctions ; swindlers, who pretend to 
be money brokers and bill discounters ; swindlers, who 
associate together for the purpose of defrauding trades¬ 
men of their goods; swindlers, who take first-class 


LONDON SWINDLERS AND SHARPERS. 


161 


lodgings, dress fashionably, and assume false names; 
sharpers, who prey upon people from the country who 
is supposed to have money; sharpers, who play at 
skittles and cards ; sharpers, who dress in the garb of 
sailors, pretending to sell foreign goods. 

London Swindlers. —Two men were brought before 
Mr. Chance on remand, at the Thames Police Office, 
September 28th, 1871, charged with conspiring to de¬ 
fraud tradesmen, and with actually defrauding fourteen 
or sixteen tradesmen by means of passing cheques on 
the Birkbeck Bank, where the prisoners and the persons 
whose names were signed to the cheques had no funds. 
A few weeks ago a man calling himself A—, but 
whose real name is supposed to ho B—, opened an 
account at the Birkbeck Bank by paying in a deposit 
of £10. He was provided with a cheque hook, and 
next day one of the cheques for £9. 16s. was presented 
at the hank and paid. The other cheques in the book, 
forty-eight in number, have since been made use of by 
the prisoners to defraud tradesmen, and a large amount 
of goods have been obtained. A considerable number 
of‘cases have been brought forward, and goods, ob¬ 
tained by means of the cheques, which were found at 
the residence of the prisoners, were identified. Nume¬ 
rous worthless cheques on the Birkbeck Bank were 
put into circulation. 

London Sharpers. —A low looking fellow was 
indicted, at the Middlesex Sessions, for stealing a 
purse and six shillings from a person living in Essex. 
On the 12th September, 1871, he went into a public- 
house in Whitechapel about half-past ten in the 
morning, and was followed by the prisoner. The 
latter entered into conversation with him, and, pro¬ 
ducing a bundle of what appeared to be bank notes, 
told the “ old story ” of having recovered the money 

L 


162 


LONDON CARD SHARPERS. 


from a railway company, ending, as usual, in inviting 
1 13 prosecutor to show his purse. This, prosecutor 
declined to do, but another man standing by showed 
his and received half-a-sovereign from the prisoner. 
The latter then chucked witness under the chin and 
said, “ If you are a gentleman keep your head up. 
My father told me always to hold my head up when I 
was in the company of gentlemen.” He then ran 
suddenly out of the house across the road. A number 
of flash Bank of England notes, an imitation gold 
watch and chain, were found on him. 

London Card Sharpers. —Four men the other day 
entered a railway carriage, and as soon as the train 
started cards were produced in one compartment, and the 
“ three card trick was introduced.” One of the travellers 
being satisfied that he could tell where the ace was, 
ventured £10 on his supposed sagacious opinion, and 
having lost that amount, he speculated a second £10 
with a similarly unfortunate result. Getting desperate, 
he, in the third instance, bet £20 he could detect the 
winning card, but, of course, again lost. 

London Money Lenders. —Bill discounters and 
young gentlemen bearing Her Majesty’s commission are 
with deplorable frequency brought together under cir¬ 
cumstances in which deliberate rapacity on the one hand, 
and consummate folly on the other, are unmistakably 
manifest. Scarcely a week passes without circulars 
being forwarded to recently appointed Cornets and 
Ensigns, in which plausible offers are made by obliging 
money scriveners, generally resident at the West-end 
of London, to do business on mutually satisfactory 
terms with gentlemen in want of “ temporary accomo¬ 
dation.” Merely a moderate rate of interest is men¬ 
tioned, no abnormal security is hinted at—all, osten¬ 
sibly, is to be open, fair, and above board. It is only 


LONDON VICE. 


163 


when the negotiation assumes a more substantial form 
—when the young officer who needs temporary accom¬ 
modation has obtained a few days’ leave from his regi¬ 
ment, hurried up to town, passed a feverish night at 
an hotel, flung himself the next morning into a hansom 
and driven down to the address given in the circular— 
that the engaging document assumes the guise of the 
pact made between Faust and Mephisto, and the 
snugly-furnished office of the money-lender is metamor¬ 
phosed into the care of Trophonius. Then does the 
moderate rate of interest swell to sixty or a hundred 
per cent., and often to more; then does the reasonable 
security demanded amount to an assignment of the 
officer’s commission, or to his being required to execute 
a warrant of attorney, by means of which the holder 
of the bill may sign judgment against his debtor the 
very moment after it has arrived at maturity, without 
being at the pains of seeing him. It has been found 
by acute discounters that this system is far more re¬ 
munerative than the old practice of half cash, half 
wine—or pictures, or jewellery. The dupe gives him¬ 
self up body and soul to the inveigler. He executes 
himself, as the French say. He will be literally out 
on bail—if he does not honour his acceptance—and 
wholly in the hands of a creditor in whose dictionary 
the word mercy is not to be found. 

London Vice.— During the past year the Society 
for the Suppression of Vice prosecuted and convicted 
nine notorious dealers in obscene photographs and 
other publications, shut up several of those disgraceful 
shops in which the traffic is carried on, and succeeded 
in getting rid of one of the most notorious houses of 
ill-fame in London. The seizures of vast quantities of 
immoral books and prints in Holywell Street, which 
attracted some notice at the time, have been done on 

l 2 


164 


LONDON FENCES. 


its movement and at its expense, and a yet viler trade 
which was carried on by circulars and advertisements 
has been broken up. More than forty persons have 
been brought to justice during the last two years for 
dealing in licentious books, photographs and pictures. 


LONDON FENCES. 

There is a tradition of the Lombards, who are 
generally supposed to have been the original pawn¬ 
brokers, that they had the honour of accommodating 
kings, emperors, counts and barons, just as there is a 
rumour, in all but universal circulation and credit that 
those accommodating relatives, our “uncles” in London, 
take a special interest in the private property pillaged 
in the shape of plate and jewellery and disposed of as 
spoil by mobsmen, magsmen, cracksmen, and clyfakers. 
As a rule, pawnbrokers do not receive stolen property. 
They are men of the highest respectability, and have a 
position to maintain. This being know to professional 
thieves and burglars, they never so pawn the property 
of which they have illegally possessed themselves. 
When they have anything to do with the pawnbroker, 
they are “ doing the polite,” their dealings are honest 
and fair ; but when they are pledging the proceeds of 
a robbery, they are “ on the loose,” their transactions 
are with “fences,” “dolly shops,” and “respectable 
tradesmen” who buy “ old gold and silver,” and “ pur¬ 
chase libraries” and “ wardrobes;” the whole being 
done on the principle that it is “ high life” to attend a 
pigeon shooting match at Hurlingham, and “ low life” 
to be present at a rat killing match in Whitechapel. 

Fences are as well known to the thieving community 
as to the local police, who can tell you where each par¬ 
ticular fence is to be found, in what tripe shop lie dines, 



THE MELTING-POT AT THE FENCE. 165 

and in wliat lodging-house he sleeps. “ The general 
public” believes of the fence that he is an individual 
whose hand, at the thief’s tap, comes out of a pipe in 
a minute, and covered with a glove, takes the jewellery, 
gives the money for it, and disappears, no more to be 
seen—in short, the fence is supposed to be a very 
mysteiious being, who dwells in an edifice of palatial 
splendour, pierced with secret pipes, and riddled with 
trap-doors, with other such theatrical machinery, 
whereas in nine cases out of ten, he is a dirty little 
old man, who lives in some small, nasty-smelling court 
somewhere near Petticoat Lane, or in the old Mint, or 
upon the “ green slopes” of Saffron Hill, or in the 
“ pleasant suburb” of Whitechapel. He is the Jona¬ 
than Wild of the day, the trainer, patron, and supporter 
of swell-mobsmen and pickpockets, and the educator 
and banker of burglars. He never thieves himself, 
but he has any amount of money to buy stolen pro¬ 
perty. 

Some “do nothing but buy;” some have public 
houses; some keep shops and pass as respectable 
tradesmen, being to all outward appearances marine 
store-dealers, or furniture-brokers, or dealers in ladies’ 
and gents’ wardrobes, or general dealers. But a peep 
inside the shop tells the real trade. There you see 
(perhaps) two hundred silk pocket handkerchiefs, 
second-hand, the marks removed, and no two alike, 
demonstrating to the satisfaction of the most incre¬ 
dulous that the fence is not (in the language of Jerry 
Cruncher), “a honest tradesman, wot lives by the 
sweat of his brow.” 

There are two kinds of fences,—the “big boss” 
fence, who keeps a melting-pot in his house, and has 
sufficient capital invested in his business to deal for big 
lots, and the “ minor” fence, who, shrinking from the 


166 VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY IN THE FAR EAST. 

proceeds of a big burglary, buys only silk pocket- 
handkerchiefs, watches, rings, snuff-boxes, great coats, 
umbrellas, pewter pots, lead piping, brass cocks, table- 
linen, or a leash of billiard balls. 

If the reader should be ever adventurous enough to 
make a voyage of discovery in the far East, he will see 
the fence standing at his door, a meerschaum or a big 
Hamburgh cigar in his mouth, his beard three days 
old, his sealskin waistcoat—once a lady’s jacket, de¬ 
corated with portable property in the shape of a huge 
gold cable chain, while he himself watches the 
“ crusher” with one eye, and with the other “looksh 
out for gustomersh retty for pisnesh.” 

Where is that silk umbrella we left in the cab? 
where that great coat we missed at the Paddington 
platform ? where that watch we left behind on getting 
out of the Chelsea omnibus one Sunday afternoon, 
after a long and pleasant chat about the Tichborne 
case with our fellow-traveller in the new black coat 
and the snow-white cravat, whom we took to be a 
curate of the Established Church ? where is the signet 
ring which disappeared about the time when we helped 
an exceedingly embarrassed and extremely comely 
young lady over the gangway of a Woolwich boat ? 
Where, indeed ? The fence knows. It was he who 
gave eighteen-pence for the umbrella (net value a 
guinea-and-a-half); who got our great coat, lined with 
the best mink, for half-a-guinea; who bought the 
watch, a gold hunter of Dent’s, lever action, jewelled 
in four holes, for “three pun and a drain;” and who 
is the possessor at this moment of our signet ring, with 
crest and motto, “ who takes me, keeps me,” in 18 
carat metal, for a “ bob and a bender.” 

To buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest mar¬ 
ket is the maxim of fences as of free-traders. Their 



WAGGON LOADS OF STOLEN PROPERTY. 167 

system is to realise their gains by buying at a ri¬ 
diculously low price the property which has been stolen 
by others. They gave something very like £30 for 
the whole stock of jewellery worth some £17,000 
which was lifted from the top of Lady Ellesmere’s cab 
several years ago. The thieves disposed of their find 
so cheaply, because they thought that they had got a 
lot of trumpery belonging to some flash woman. They 
must have been inexperienced magsmen. Swell cracks¬ 
men are sharper with their swag At all times, how¬ 
ever, they sell dirt cheap; or several waggon-loads of 
valuable stolen property could scarcely have been found 
on the premises of a certain “general dealer,” in 
Gravel Lane, Houndsditch, when his house was 
searched in 1854. 

When a burglary going to be done is expected to be 
a good one, the cracksmen tell the fence to be prepared 
for them “ again they come home if it turns out all 
well.” To be “prepared” is to have the melting-pot 
at a white heat; and into the melting-pot all the silver 
goes at once. If there are jewels, the stones are taken 
out, and the gold too, goes into the pot. But jewels 
and watches if in large lots are usually sent abroad. 
When plate was taken to the value of £3,000 at the 
great burglary at Lord Foley’s (which robbery came 
the year after Lady Ellesmere’s), all his lordship’s 
plate except a few silver salt tops, went into the 
melting-pot. Other persons pretty well known through 
the records of the police courts are the proprietors of 
“dolly shops,” who purchase goods from whoever 
brings them, upon an understanding that they may be 
repurchased within a week or a month. 

Most serious accusations, too, are made against 
“tradesmen of respectability” who print announce¬ 
ments, and put advertisements in newspapers, as buyers 


168 


LONDON THIEVES. 


of old gold and silver, libraries and wardrobes. They 
make splendid bargains without investigating how the 
sellers came into possession of the goods. Any one who 
has stolen property to dispose of, can send it in a parcel 
to the place advertised in any part of London or else¬ 
where, with a letter asking for a remittance ; and even 
though the stolen property be plate engraved with 
initials and crest, the seller will in the course of post 
receive the remittance without a single question. 

The day is nigh at hand when fences, keepers of 
dolly shops, and “ respectable tradesmen 5 ’ will no longer 
pursue their nefarious calling unmolested. The police 
will be put upon them. Then fencing in Whitechapel 
will be about as hard and hazardous a task as leaping 
over hedges and ditches in Leicestershire, at the tails 
of the Quorn Hunt. The police will harass the fence 
night and day; he will make Ins life a burden to him; 
he will haul him before the magistrate at all hours and 
at all seasons. A melting-pot on a man’s premises will 
be held as proof of fencing, as a battery is of coining. 
A man with a melting-pot in his house is one of 
three things, a fence, an amateur or a bond fide artificer. 
And if such a man gives a young vagabond of sixteen 
ten shillings for a gold chronometer watch worth fifty 
guineas, it will be idle for him to pretend that he be¬ 
lieves he is doing a legitimate business. A policeman 
finding him in possession of ingots is as certain whence 
they came, as a farmer, finding his chickens gone, is 
certain that a fox has eaten them. Nobody ever caught 
the fox or the fence in the act, but nobody ever doubts 
the guilt of either. 

How Stolen Property is Disposed of. —Mr. George Atten¬ 
borough says that stolen goods taken by pawnbrokers are 
infinitessimal in number compared with the immense quantity- 
stolen. The plunder of the professional thief is never 
pawned. He never knew a burglar to pledge the proceeds of 


LIFE IN THE HOUSE OF CORRECTION 


169 


robbery , or a pawnbroker to have to give evidence against one. 
Domestic servants and amateur thieves sometimes pawn, but 
they keep the duplicates, which in many cases prove the chief 
clue to their detection. Ninety-five per cent, of the articles pawned 
are redeemed, and, consequently, are free from suspicion, while of 
the five per cent, unredeemed the owners of at least three per cent, 
are known, and it is unfair to conclude that because the re¬ 
maining two per cent, are not known, that the goods are 
necessarily stolen. 

Life in the House of Correction. —There are eighty warders. 
They board and live out of doors, but every fifth night, in rotation, 
a part of them have to remain through the night. Every cell is 
inspected half-hourly, and this can be done without rousing the 
inmate, for through an eyelet-hole the apartment can be fully in¬ 
spected. The separation of the prisoners is absolute; but if a man 
becomes ill, or needs help on any account, he need only touch a 
spring alarm bell, a loud shrill summons is given, at the same instant, 
a small glass trap is thrown open, inscribed with the number of the 
cell, and the prisoner is immediately visited. The cell is little en¬ 
cumbered with furniture. The prisoner sleeps in a hammock. 
During the day this, enclosing a sheet and a blanket, is strapped up 
ready for use. The prisoner needs but unfold it and fix the ham¬ 
mock on prepared supports. In the morning, it is his duty to fold 
it away as before. In addition, there is a kind of seat built in the 
wall ; in the new cells, also a water-closet and convenience for 
washing; but m some of the old cells these are only imperfectly 
supplied. Each man has a change of linen weekly. Three meals 
daily—breakfast, dinner, and supper—are allowed; bread and gruel 
or bread and cocoa for the first and last meal; meat for dinner 
three times a week ; broth or soup on the rest. Nothing extra on 
a Sunday, which is a soup and gruel day. Nothing but water is 
allowed for drink. No smoking is tolerated. The allowance of 
bread at each meal is a loaf of four ounces, a day old. A can of 
salt is placed in each cell, and this may be used ad libitum. There 
are lifts for the food: and as the trays stop at each cell door, a 
small panel recedes, and the meal is duly forwarded. There are 
dark cells for the punishment of the refractory, and a day’s im¬ 
murement commonly reduces the worst to obedience. The 
total number of indictable offences committed during the year 
1870 was 14,871, against 17,388 in 1869, a decrease of 2,517 
offences; the per-centage of convictions was 18*92 per cent, in 1869; 
in 1870 it was 19*19 per cent. 

Convict Prisons.— In 1845, when the population was 16,739,136, 
the number of sentences to imprisonment was 14,052 ; sentences to 
penal servitude, 3,247 : and to capital punishment, 49 ; whilst in 
1870, when the population was 22,100,000 the number of sentences 


170 


LONDON AT A GLANCE. 


to imprisonment was 10,908; sentences to penal servitude, 1,788; 
and to capital punishment, 15. Thus the absolute diminution in 
that period (notwithstanding the increased population) has been 
4,637, and relatively to the population the diminution has been — 
for sentences to imprisonment, 41 per cent.; to transportation or 
penal servitude, 58 per cent. ; and capital punishment, 76 per cent. 
As to the cost of prisoners, we find that in 1864 the number of con¬ 
victs was 7,418, and the annual cost of each prisoner was 
£33. 6s. 8d. ; whereas in 1870, whilst the number of prisoners had 
increased to 9,557, the annual cost of each had fallen to £31. 7s. 5d. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

LONDON AT A GLANCE. 

London Growth. — The population of London 
and its suburbs was calculated by Sir William Petty, 
in 1687, to be 696,000; and Gregory King, in 
1697, by the hearth-money, made it 530,000 ; and yet 
by actual census in 1801, including Westminster, 
Southwark, and the adjacent hills, it proved to be only 
864,845. From 1801 to 1841—that is, in forty years 
—the population of London advanced from 864,000 to 
1,873,000. In forty years the metropolis had increased 
above a million, or more than through all the previous 
history of the kingdom. In ten years more it had 
swelled to 2,361,640, or nearly half a million more. 
Again, in 1861 it had risen to 2,803,034, or an 
increase in ten years of 441,394 souls. Census 1871, 
England and Wales, 22,704,108 souls. The rate of 
increase in the last ten years has been 13 per cent. 

London. Air— Some centuries ago, we are told, 
the salubrity of the air of London was most remark¬ 
able, inasmuch that it had a perceptible effect in 
producing kindliness and liberality in the inhabitants 
—an effect which may probably have evaporated after 
so many years. Dwellers in our overgrown London of 
to-day are mocked with glowing accounts of citizens’ 



LONDON AIR AND WATER. 


171 


gardens in the suburbs, spaliosi as well as speciosi. To 
the north were green fields and pastures, and a broad 
expanse of meadows, intersected with numerous running 
brooks. The south of London is considered to rank 
next to the West-end in the purity of its air ; that is, 
in the abundance of oxygen it contains. This is de¬ 
monstrated by tests made by Dr. Angus Smith. Of 
oxygen in 100 parts of air he found as follows : W.C. 
and W. districts, 20*925; S. and S. W. districts, 
20*883 ; E. and E.C. districts, 20*860 ; and N., N.E., 
and N.W. districts, 20*157. It will be seen that the 
northern heights of London, supposed to be strong¬ 
holds of health, come out of this trial worse than the 
maligned south. 

London Water. —Dr. E. Frankland, F.R.S., in his 
usual monthly report upon the quality of the metro¬ 
politan water supply, states that the London waters 
were submitted to investigation, as regards efficient 
filtration and freedom from suspended matter, on five 
distinct occasions during September. Excepting two 
days when the Southwark and Vauxhall Company 
delivered turbid water, the result of these investigations 
was entirely satisfactory. The analysis of the waters 
showed a marked general improvement upon the quality 
supplied in the previous month. The best river water— 
that delivered by the Chelsea and Grand Junction 
Companies—contained, however, more than four times 
as much organic matter as that supplied by the Kent 
Company which is drawn from deep chalk wells. The 
London river water during the summer months was 
“vapid and unpalatable’’ from its high temperature, 
which ranged from 66*2 deg. to 71*6 deg. Fahrenheit; 
while the Kent deep-well water maintained a steady 
temperature of 59 deg. Fahrenheit, 15 deg. Centigrade. 
Almost everywhere, except in the metropolis, drinking 


172 


LONDON AT A GLANCE. 


water may be obtained in plenty of a quality that 
surprises the untravelled Londoner, and not a few 
tourists carry home with them bottles of water from 
springs that have charmed them, only to discover, 
perhaps, that the liquid loses its sparkle, its coldness, 
and its flavor by confinement and transit. But why 
could we not have several distinctive kinds of water 
supplied to us in London by the aid of engineering, so 
as to enlarge the range of our daily wants and in¬ 
crease the inducements to sobriety ? It might be 
done, no doubt, and pay well in the end, but possibly 
has never been thought of as a subject of trading 
enterprise. 

London Food. —The express meat tram, which 
runs nightly from Aberdeen to London, drawn by 
two engines, and makes the journey in twenty-four 
hours, is but a single illustration of the rapid and 
certain method by which modern London is fed by 
steam. The North Highlands of Scotland have thus, by 
means of railways, become grazing grounds for the 
metropolis. Express fish trains from Dunbar and Eye¬ 
mouth (Smeaton’s harbours), augmented by fish trucks 
from Cullercoats, and Tynemouth on the Northumber¬ 
land coast, and from Hedcar, Whitby, and Scarborough 
on the Yorkshire coast, also arrive in London every 
morning. And what with steam vessels bearing 
cattle and meat and fish arriving by sea, canal boats 
laden with potatoes from inland, and railway vans 
laden with butter and milk drawn from a wide circuit 
of the country, with road vans piled high with vege¬ 
tables within easy drive of Co vent Garden, the great 
mouth is thus from day to day regularly, satisfactorily, 
and expeditiously filled. From the west coast of Ire¬ 
land a plentiful supply of salmon is daily conveyed to 
the London market. Salmon, in this portion of the 



GENERAL POST OFFICE-TELEGRAPHS. 


173 


world, at one time never sold for more than one penny 
per pound. It now sells as highly in Galway as in Lon¬ 
don, thus enriching a hitherto impoverished people. 

London General Post Office. Half-penny Post 
Cards. —1,668,000 of these cards pass through the 
Post Office in the United Kingdom in a week; and 
22,500,000 newspapers in the quarter of a year. One 
town has now nine mails every day from London, and 
eight to London. The number of letters returned in 
the past year amounted to 3,792,894: 11,505 bore no 
address, 289 contained money orders. 936,000,000 
letters and book packets passed through the post in 
one year: 27,913 were alleged to be lost. The gross 
revenue of the Post Office for the last year was 
£4,929,475. 

London Telegraphs. —The head office is in Tele¬ 
graph Street, Lothbury, and contains two immense 
rooms, styled respectively the “ Provincial,” and the 
“ Metropolitan” galleries; the former is about 6,000 
square feet area. The instruments are worked mostly 
by women, 539 of whom are employed at this office, 
and 317 men as clerks, and 182 messengers. There 
are altogether 395 instruments upstairs, for the motive 
power of wdiich, downstairs, no less than 1,400 batteries 
of ten cells each are fitted up. In less than two years 
the telegraphic system of the country has undergone a 
revolution; 4,000 telegraph offices where there were only 
2,000 before, and a uniform rate of one shilling, in¬ 
stead of charges varying from one shilling to six 
s hillin gs, making a saving of £300,000 a year to the 
public in telegraphy. The total number of messages 
in the United Kingdom sent in one week amounted to 
256,456. The benefit of telegraphy to the police has 
been very great. The number of messages transmitted 
has increased from 14,719 in 1868, to 43,853 in 1870: 
in fact it has become an indispensable adjunct. 


174 


LONDON AT A GLANCE. 


London Charities. —The following list will con¬ 
vey some idea of the benevolence of the people re¬ 
siding in the metropolis and its vicinity. 16 Hospitals 
(General). 49 Hospitals (Special). 46 Dispensaries. 
19 Convalescent Hospitals. 6 Invalid Hospitals. 6 
Lunatic Asylums. 93 Homes and Refuges. 15 Insti¬ 
tutions for the Blind. 6 for the Deaf and Dumb. 5 for 
Incurables. 7 for Nurses. 32 for Relief of Distress. 8 
for Gentlewomen. 3 for Needlewomen. 24 for Widows. 
6 for Infants. 44 for Orphans. 9 for the Protection 
of Women. 5 for Emigration. 14 for Employment. 
15 for Labouring Classes. 34 for the Clergy. 13 
for Dissenting Ministers. 12 for Benefit of the Jews. 
14 for Discharged Prisoners. 2 for Relief of Debtors. 
18 Penitentiaries for Women. 42 for Sailors. 15 for 
Soldiers, and 1 for Friendly Society members, viz.—the 
Metropolitan Benefit Societies’ Asylum. 

London School Board. —The first Board, consisting 
of forty-nine members, was elected on the 29th of 
November, 1870, and the first meeting was held at the 
Guildhall (now in Bridge-street, Blackfriars). The 
two lady members, Miss Davies and Miss Garrett, were 
warmly cheered as they passed to take their seats, and 
we believe they will never fail to command respectful 
and earnest attention. Lord Lawrence was elected 
chairman. The London School Board recently as¬ 
sembled to consider the case of those who want 
the very bread and water of education. They 
could exhibit no cheering picture. The state of 
Finsbury and the statistics of ignorance submitted by 
the Rev. Mr. Rogers may be taken as a counteractive 
to the glow of satisfaction caused by Lord Derby. Of 
the 81,000 children who come within the ages contem¬ 
plated by the “Education Act,” 68,000 are able 
to pay more than ninepence a week. Of these 


SCHOOL BOARD—RAGGED SCHOOLS. 175 

68,000, 46,640 were returned as actually attending 
school. About 8,500 were excused from attendance 
on satisfactory grounds. We are finally told that 
about 26,000 children were in Finsbury alone deprived 
of education. “If we multiply these figures by ten 
we shall obtain,” said Mr. Rogers, “some idea of the 
painfully imperfect deficiency of primary education in 
the metropolis in spite of the labours of the Board.” 
Nor is this a solitary fact. The Act works slowly and 
partially. After twelve months’ experience of the 
working of the Act, two-thirds of the country are un¬ 
provided with School Boards, and there has not of late 
been exhibited any eager desire on the part of the 
people to avail themselves of the advantages of the 
Act, which has now more enemies than friends. Mr. 
Rogers would have all children from five to thirteen 
swept into school by a sort of educational coup d’ etat; 
and he submitted a motion to the effect “ That the 
parents of every child of not less than five years, nor 
more than thirteen years of age, is required to cause 
such child to attend school, unless there be some rea¬ 
sonable excuse for non-attendance.” Mr. W. H. Smith, 
M.P., spoke the feeling of the greater portion of the 
public (in proposing his amendment to Mr. Morley, 
with regard to the denomination fee system); “he 
felt that all matters of detail should be avoided for 
a time, in order that the Board might at once get to 
work, for at present they were exposing themselves to 
the odium of the country by their course of proceed¬ 
ing,” and the compromise which was ultimately effected 
by that gentleman (Mr. Smith), between the two 
parties will not in a little tend to unite the Board to 
cany out their work fairly and peaceably. 

London Ragged Schools. —The Earl of Shaftesbury 
says, in his letter to the Times* November 7th, 1871, “I 


176 


LONDON AT A GLANCE. 


may, however, be permitted to say that, all things 
being taken into account, the founders and conductors 
of them are entitled to the sympathy and gratitude of 
the public. They ere begun at a time when these 
vast and terrible classes were not only neglected, but 
absolutely unknown. A few men and women of 
fervent piety and indefatigable zeal, shocked at the 
spectacle of such a mass of sorrow, dived into the dens 
and recesses of London life, and collected the naked, 
filthy and destitute children, first by twos and by threes, 
then by larger numbers, in the several localities, until, 
after a period of twenty-seven years, from a single 
school of five small infants, the work has grown into 
a cluster of some 300 schools, an aggregate of nearly 
30,000 children, and a body of 3,000 voluntary 
teachers, most of them the sons and daughters of 
toil, who have found and who find their relaxation 
and repose in the sacred duty of rescuing the out¬ 
casts.” Many other associations have aided the work. 
The Industrial Schools, the Refuges, the Shoe-black 
Brigades, have borne their part. The Chichester 
Training Ship alone has, in the course of four years, 
sent 700 lads from the slums and allevs of London 
into the Mercantile Marine. 300,000 children have 
passed through these schools since their first commence¬ 
ment. The periods of their stay have varied from 
a few weeks, or even a few days, to a few years. 

London Police.— The Metropolitan Police District 
contains the whole of the county of Middlesex, and 
the parishes in the counties of Surrey, Hertford, 
Essex arid Kent, of which any part is within twelve 
miles of Charing Cross, and those also of which any 
paid is not more than fifteen miles in a straight line 
from Charing Cross, except the City of London and the 
Liberties ; it is also employed in Her Majesty’s dock- 


LONDON POLICE AND DETECTIVES. 


177 


yards and military stations situated beyond the Metro¬ 
politan Police District. The force consists of 22 
superintendents, 257 inspectors, 955 sergeants, 7,922 
constables. 

The total number of persons apprehended by the Metropolitan 
Police during the year 1870 was 71,269, being 1,682 less than in 
1869, when the numbers were 72,951; but it is an observable fact 
that the number of persons so arrested who were discharged by the 
magistrates was only 24,146 in 1870, against 28,355 in 1869; a 
decrease of 4,209. 21,625 persons were arrested in 1870, against 

20,391 in 1869, for being drunk or drunk and disorderly. The 
mime of larceny from the person is the smallest on record. 

London Detectives. —Mr. A. Manson, Superintendent of the Y 
Division of Metropolitan Police, reports that “ It is impossible to escape 
the conclusion that our metropolitan detective police force is inade¬ 
quate to the work which it has to perform. In the country everybody, 
more or less, knows everybody else, and it is—with the one exception 
of skilful poisoning—almost impossible to commit one of those crimes 
which come under the head of ‘ indictable offences against the per¬ 
son.’ But in a large town all the conditions of life are reversed. 
A hundred yards from his own house a man is not known. His 
coming out and his going in are not noticed. Everything favours 
his escape, provided he has no accomplices, or only accomplices upon 
whom he can rely. As soon as the murderer has turned a street 
corner he is practically safe, unless evidence against him already 
exists. What is wanted for the work of a detective is merely 
patience. If once, by accident, or by his own acuteness in striking 
a trail, or by the treachery of accomplices, put fairly upon the 
track, the detective is almost certain to run his man down. Hence 
it is that the force is so successful in capturing thieves. The evi¬ 
dence of a policeman against a thief invariably commences with the 
magic words, ‘ from information which I received ;* and this same 
* information ’ is almost always a piece of treachery. Exactly as the 
most dangerous of all rogues is a rogue who is well up in the tech¬ 
nicalities of the law, so there can be no doubt that a bold criminal 
who has gauged the ability of the detective force, and knows its 
idiosyncracy, can practically defy detection. Nine murders out of 
•every ten are unpremeditated, and the murderer in his excitement 
throws the noose round his own neck, by putting into the hands of 
the police evidence against himself which it is impossible to over¬ 
look. In a premeditated and carefully planned murder, we ought, 
as a rule, to discover the murderer, by following out the simple and 
obvious question cut bono ? But even then a bold and skilful man 
can easily contrive, not only to break the trail, but also to actually 
put the police upon a false scent. It would be unfair to blame the 

31 


178 


LONDON AT A GLANCE. 


detective force because they are unable to cope with criminals of the 
most intelligent type. For his ordinary work the detective is fully 
competent; he takes to it kindly, and he prosecutes it with zeal 
and patience. Burglars, coiners, receivers of stolen goods—in short 
all criminals of the commoner order are almost absolutely at his 
mercy. But the moment he is confronted with a crime at all out 
of the ordinary course he is as absolutely at fault as if he had no 
special training. Very bad men, who are also very bold men, are 
rare ; and amongst the few that there are, very few ever meet with 
an inducement sufficient to tempt them to the commission of a dan¬ 
gerous crime. During the year 1870 the arrests made by the 163 
Divisional Detectives were 5,084, of whom 3,263 or 64’18 per cent, 
were convicted. 

London in its enormous circumference of nearly half- 
a-liundred miles is the epitome of the world, and its 
inhabitants, more than three millions in number, the 
representatives of mankind. 

Its astonishing commercial intercourse with other 
parts of the empire and foreign countries is best judged 
by a visit to the Thames below London Bridge from 
the upper, middle, and lower Pool to Limehouse and 
Deptford, a space about four miles long and from four 
to live hundred yards broad, where ships and vessels, 
barges and other craft engaged in the inland trade, 
are congregated in scores of thousands. 

The manufactures practised in the metropolis com¬ 
prise porter, English wines, vinegar, and refined sugar; 
machinery, optical and mathematical instruments; 
cutlery, jewelry, gold and silver ornaments, japan ware, 
cut glass, cabinet work, endless articles of elegance and 
utility, ship-building, the printing of cahcoes and the 
making of silk. 

Foremost among the public buildings devoted to 
commerce is the Bank of England. The hall in which 
hank notes are issued and exchanged, is built in imita¬ 
tion of the Temple of the Sun and Moon in Rome; 
the underground apartments are stored with bullion 
and coin. 


PUBLIC BUILDINGS. 


179 


On a par with this great national establishment is 
the Royal Exchange on the north side of Cornhill, 
with “Lloyds” for underwriters, insurance brokers and 
agents for the protection of the commercial interests 
of subscribers. Then there is the Stock Exchange in 
Capel Court, where stock in the public funds, Ex¬ 
chequer bills, India bonds, and other securities are 
bought and sold; the Corn Exchange in Mark Lane, 
and the Coal Exchange. The Tower stands on the north 
side of the Thames, also the Custom House, where all 
the Queen’s duties are collected on goods imported to, 
or exported from, London ; and in Broad Street is 
the Excise Office, where nine Commissioners transact 
the town business of the Excise with the assistance of 
a large staff of clerks and officers. 

The Auction Mart is the place principally for the 
sale of landed property by public auction, though 
many sales of this description take place at Garraway’s 
Coffee House in ’Change Alley. 

The Trinity House on Tower Hill, built in the purest 
style of Grecian architecture, is where maritime affairs 
generally and some business connected with the Thames 
are transacted by a “Master” and “Wardens.” 

At the Post Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, the 
clerks of the Foreign Office sleep in case a mail should 
arrive in those hours of the night when the great 
heart of London is still. 

The churches of London next claim attention. 
They may be counted by hundreds, exhibiting a great 
variety in their age and construction, and divided best 
into three classes : churches of ancient erection ; those 
built in the reign of Queen Anne and her successors, 
and the more modern temples of divine worship. 
Sir Christopher Wren’s magnificent, stupendous struc¬ 
ture of St. Paul’s Cathedral, stands foremost not only 

m 2 


180 


LONDON AT A GLANCE. 


of London, but of the whole world. The Collegiate 
Church of Westminster Abbey, has its famous school 
founded by Queen Elizabeth for educating in the 
Liberal Sciences, preparatory to removal to the Uni¬ 
versity, called “ Queen’s Scholars,” where some of the 
most illustrious characters, such as the Duke of Rich¬ 
mond, have received their education. 

London has a University, two Colleges, besides Work¬ 
men’s Colleges. Between four and five hundred free 
endowed schools and others, private and parochial, 
charitable, national, Sunday, evening, and otherwise. 

London once had a fair—Bartholomew—famous for 
the sale of cloth and other commodities. The principal 
market for live cattle has been removed for some years 
to Copenhagen Fields. On the site of Smithfield, is 
the principal market in London, called “ the Metro¬ 
politan,” chiefly wholesale for butchers’ meat,—that 
for the East of London is held at Whitechapel. The 
Metropolitan is also wholesale for fresh fish by land 
carriage, Billingsgate being still the principal market 
for the sale of fish. Newport and Clare are markets 
for home-killed butchers’ meat; Newgate and Leaden- 
hall for poultry and pigs killed in the country, with 
fresh butter and eggs to an enormous extent; Covent 
Garden, Farringdon, Portland, Finsbury, Spitalfields 
and the Borough are noted for supplying an abundance 
of vegetables and fruits. Leadenhall and the Borough 
are the only skin markets in London. 

The “City” of London, does not exceed 300 acres, is 
divided into twenty-five wards, and has a most im¬ 
posing civil government. The Corporation of Lord 
Mayor, Sheriffs (two of them), Aldermen (twenty-five), 
Common Councilmen (not far from three hundred), are 
assisted by officials, splendidly remunerated, a Recorder, 
a Common Serjeant, a Chamberlain, a Comptroller, a 


PUBLIC BUILDINGS. 


181 


City Remembrancer, a Town Clerk, and others. The 
Lord Mayor has prerogatives of great extent and im¬ 
portance. As the immediate representative of the 
Sovereign, he takes precedence of every other subject 
within the limits of the City, and, in the event of the 
monarch’s decease, becomes the first officer in the 
realm! Takes his seat at the Privy Council Board, 
and signs before all other subjects in the kingdom ! 
He acts as chief butler at all coronations, receiving a 
gold cup and ewer for his fee. He is the first Com¬ 
missioner of the Lieutenancy, being invested with 
power similar to those possessed by the Lord Lieutenant 
of a County! To him belongs the ancient Court of 
Hustings, which preserves the laws, rights, franchises 
and customs of the City. He is perpetual coroner and 
escheator for the City of London, the Liberties, and 
the Borough of Southwark; Chief Justice in all com¬ 
missions for trial of felony and sits every morning at 
the Mansion House to hear and determine causes of 
offence within the jurisdiction of the City. 

The hospitals are between thirty and forty. Some 
of them are of immense extent, and imposing archi¬ 
tecture, none more so than St. Thomas’s, which stands 
on the south bank of the Thames, directly opposite the 
Houses of Parliament. There are almshouses, asylums, 
dispensaries and workhouses, one at least in each parish, 
—the inhabitants expending in charity every year 
more than a million sterling. 

The British Museum is a very popular institution. 
Here may be seen the venerable document, Magna 
Charta, the Sandwich Islands’ curiosities, stuffed 
animals, minerals, bronzes, coins, metal antiquities, 
marbles (the Townlcy and Elgin), manuscripts (the 
Ilarleian and Cottonian), and a world-famed accumu¬ 
lated store of printed books, the nucleus of which was 
the library of the Kings of England since Henry VIII. 


182 


LONDON AT A GLANCE. 


Tlio National Gallery has a noble array of pictures, 
presenting works of different countries, different periods 
of time, and essentially different schools. 

The Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences, which 
was opened by the Queen in November last, and the 
South Kensington Museum arc both gems in their way. 
The latter contains, among other magnificent stores, 
the Vernon Collection of pictures, rich with many 
gems of contemporary art. 

London has also the galleries of private individuals : 
the Duke of Devonshire’s for Italian pictures of the 
Venetian school; the Duke of Sutherland’s; Sir Robert 
Peel’s, with its faultless pearls of the -Flemish and 
Dutch schools; the Duke of Wellington’s ; Lord Ash¬ 
burton’s ; Mr. Hope’s; the Earl of Ellesmere’s, and 
the Marquis of Westminster’s, known as the Grosvenor 
Gallery, which, besides containing many valuable works 
in all the chief schools, is one of the wealthiest in the 
country, in the works of Rembrandt, and the Dutch and 
Flemish painters. 

The Royal Academy, which started into existence in 
the days of Hogarth,Reynolds, Wilson and Gainsborough, 
is a kind of artist’s academy. Another association, 
founded in the middle of the last century, for giving 
prizes and rewards to youthful competitors in painting, 
sculpture and architecture, the Society for the Encour¬ 
agement of Aids, Manufactures and Commerce, bestow 
gold and silver medals, honorary and other rewards. 
The two Societies of Water Colour Painters, are in Pall 
Mall; the Society of the British Artists have one of 
the best galleries in London; and the British Institu¬ 
tion in Pall Mall is a gallery for the exhibition of the 
works of British artists. 

Antiquities, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, modern 
sculptures, gems, rare hooks and manuscripts, pictures, 


PARKS, SQUARES, GROUNDS. 


183 


architectural models, and whatever else may await the 
eyes of a curious visitor, are to he seen in the Soane 
Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a house with a 
peculiar exterior, Gothic corbels being attached to 
the front, without any apparent object, and the figures 
on the upper part of the building being copies of the 
Caryatides attached to the old Temple of Pandroseus 
at Athens. 

Panoramas, Dioramas and Cosmoramas are not so 
common now in London as they used to be. But 
within the last few years the number of theatres has 
been doubled, and another class of public exhibitions 
has sprung up in every locality, music halls and casinos. 
There are also dancing academies, much frequented by 
the young of both sexes, and there are gardens for 
dancing in the open air and indoors at Highbury and 
at Cremorne, and for the East-enders, at North Wool¬ 
wich. 

London is famous for open spaces of ornamental 
ground, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens hold the 
first place with their broad walks, green lawns, and pic¬ 
turesque groups of grand old oaks, elms and Lebanon 
cedars. The Green and St. James’s Parks, may be 
regarded as forming parts of one uninterrupted space 
of open pleasure ground. The Regent’s Park contests 
supremacy with Hyde Park as a drive, indisputably 
excels the others in the picturesque style in which it is 
laid out, and the magnificence of the buildings by 
which it is surrounded. Victoria Park, Battersea and 
Kennington Parks are realised facts, but Southwark 
and Finsbury are yet in the land of good intentions. 

The very extensive botanical and ornamental gar¬ 
dens occupy eighteen acres in the Regent’s Park. 
Between four and five thousand species of hardy 
herbaceous plants, trees and shrubs flourish in the open 


184 


LONDON AT A GLANCE. 


air; and in the glass houses about three thousand 
species and varieties. The most attractive spot in the 
Regent’s Park is the Zoological Gardens. 

Of the gardens in the vicinity, Kew stands forth in 
marked prominence, Chiswick holding the second place. 
Ivew belongs to botany, Chiswick to horticulture, the 
whole vegetable kingdom can he studied at Kew, and 
only fruits can be found at Chiswick. 

Great numbers of the nobility have superb residences 
—overlooking the parks, as Sutherland, Ellesmere, 
Spencer, Devonshire House, Apsley and Dorchester 
Houses. Some in squares, as Lansdowne House in 
Berkeley Square, Portman House in Portman Square, 
and Wilton House in Belgrave Square; others in lead¬ 
ing thoroughfares, as Northumberland House at Charing 
Cross, the Duke of Buccleuch’s at Whitehall, and 
Grosvenor House in Upper Grosvenor Street. 

The squares are, many of them, grand, the houses- 
finished in the first style of domestic architecture, and 
the planted areas laid out with great taste, richness and 
variety. Belgrave Square ranks first for magnificent 
mansions, and Bussell Square is without a rival, except 
it be in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, for having in its centre 
a perfect miniature landscape garden. 

Some of the principal streets and thoroughfares are 
remarkably beautiful, such as Waterloo Place, The 
Quadrant, Regent Street, Langham Place, Portland 
Place and Park Place, to the Regent’s Park; and 
Carlton House Terrace. 

The palaces of London, Buckingham and St. James’s,, 
and the Parliament House at Westminster, are of an 
imposing appearance. The Government Offices, do not 
possess the degree of splendour owned by the India 
and Foreign Offices; but new ones are to be erected 
on the same site and on the same scale of grandeur. 


LONDON IMPROVEMENTS. 


185 


Everyone must be struck by this—that in size, 
population and wealth, the English metropolis holds a 
manifest superiority over that of every other country. 

London Improvements. —A new and important 
thoroughfare has been opened to the public called “ St. 
Bride Street/’ entrance from Farringdon Street, Lud- 
gate Hill and Blackfriars in a line with “ St. Andrew’s 
Street,” joining the Holborn Circus near the western 
end of the viaduct. Another new thoroughfare known 
as Queen Victoria Street, leading from Blackfriars to 
the Mansion House, forms one of the most important 
streets in London. It partakes of the nature of an 
invitation to the world at large to observe the pro¬ 
gress of improvement and criticise the manner in 
which London is being slowly rebuilt. The following 
improvements are also about to take place:—The 
widening of the western side of High Street, Shore¬ 
ditch, to Old Street, at a cost of £270,000 ; the eastern 
side of High Street, Shoreditch—adjoining the Great 
Eastern It ail way on the north—to the Bethnal Green 
Boad, at a cost of £300,000; from Old Street to Hew 
Oxford Street, at a cost of £860,000; the widening 
of High Street, Shoreditch, at a cost of £164,000 ; the 
improvement of the Edgware and Harrow Hoads, at a 
cost of £100,495; the increase of thoroughfare from 
the Wapping entrance of the London Hocks to Little 
Tower Hill, at a cost of £162,671; and the opening of 
Newington Butts, near the church of St. Mary, at a 
cost of £8,500. There are forty acres of land to let 
in the city. The cost of the Holborn Viaduct and 
approaches have not been much less than £2,800,000. 
The piece of ground at the corner of Queen Victoria 
Street, Mansion House, has been let by the Metro¬ 
politan Board of Works for £5,500 a year, which 
is equal to about a sovereign per square foot. The- 


186 


LONDON AT A GLANCE. 


project of a railway from Euston Square to Charing 
Cross appears to afford a hope that the nuisance in 
the centre of Liecester Square will he removed, and 
this locality, so familiar to our foreign visitors, rendered 
less reproachful to our municipal authorities. The occa¬ 
sion, therefore, offers an opportunity for putting in a plea 
for a little more variety in the matter of our- open 
spaces in town. It would he in the highest degree 
satisfactory if we could for once do without iron railings. 
This would of course necessitate a different sort of 
-square to Lincoln’s Inn Fields or Bloomsbury, for a 
garden with trees, grass and gravel paths would hardly 
exist in London if quite open to the public. But surely 
we have squares enough already of the Lincoln’s Inn 
Fields type. Why should we not try the experiment 
of what the French call a ‘place’ and the Italians a 
‘piazza?’ One such square was projected by the late 
Duke of Bedford, who planned the space in Covent 
-Garden where the market now stands ; but the gardeners 
came and occupied it with fruits and flowers until they 
became too strong to be resisted. Areal ‘piazza’ such., 
as is so common in Paris and Lyons, in Turin and 
Florence, would be an agreeable change. In such a 
square a few beds of flowers like those which may be 
seen in the space opposite Palace Yard would be appro¬ 
priate ; but the great point is to set the fashion of dis¬ 
pensing with the ugly iron rails. Deptford Dockyard 
vail be converted into a cattle market. It is in 
•contemplation to make an opening between Jewin 
Street and Smithfield, and Newgate Street and Ludgate 
Hill will be spaced and made respectable some day. 
Break-neck steps, formerly abutting on the Old Bailey 
—close to where Oliver Goldsmith once lived—have 
been removed. The house in Fleet Lane, notorious 
for ages as the illegal chapel, where Fleet mar- 


LONDON IMPROVEMENTS. 


187 


riages were celebrated, has been removed. The ex¬ 
tension of the Thames Embankment from Chelsea 
to Battersea Bridge, which, when completed, will 
open up a splendid roadway for a distance of upwards 
of two miles, is being vigorously pushed forward. As- 
phalte pavement appears to be steadily making its way 
in London. It has been tried in Cheapside, with 
other important thoroughfares, and generally approved 
of. It is in contemplation to pull down St. Mildred’s, 
Poultry, and from the produce of its materials and site 
to expend £9,000 for a new church at Clerkenwell. It 
is also proposed to remove St. Clement Danes Church 
for the approaches to the new Law Courts, the found¬ 
ation of which will be finished in the early part of next 
year at a cost of about £30,000. The contractors 
have come upon a valuable bed of sand, enough for the 
whole of the works ; but, as regards the building, a cor¬ 
respondent of the City Press wants to know “when it 
is likely that people may be expected to begin thinking 
of talking about looking for the first faint indications of 
a prospective completion of the new Law Courts ?” 
In Diprose’s “ Some Account of St. Clement Danes,” it 
will be found that the site occasioned the demolition of 
thirty streets, lanes, and courts, and more than 400 
houses, tenanted by upwards of 4,000 persons. In one 
•court alone, with only six small houses, forty-eight 
families resided. The Tower Subway will be improved 
before again commencing steam transit. The Holborn 
Board of Works has recently addressed a letter to 
the Metropolitan Board of Works to preserve, adorn, 
and open the disused burial-grounds of London for the 
recreation of the people. Many of the old church¬ 
yards in London that are really historical, and hold the 
remains of many once illustrious men, have been allowed 
to fall into disorder. A small outlay would restore 


188 


LONDON AT A GLANCE. 


numerous gloomy eyesores in London to picturesque 
little pleasure grounds, and at once benefit the people and 
show respect for the dead. A London and Provincial 
Theatre Company, capital £50,000 (?) is, it is said, 
being formed. Its object is the building and leasing of 
theatres. The last scene was enacted on the stage of the- 
London Victoria Theatre, on September 14th, 1871, 
which for the past fifty years has been more or less cele¬ 
brated for its dramatic productions of the blood and 
thunder school. The principal actor on the occasion was. 
the auctioneer, whose rostrum was erected on the stage, 
amidst heaps of “properties” and other articles. The- 
stage with all its traps, fittings, barrels, pulleys, etc., 
brought but £25. A new building of the most gor¬ 
geous character is to rise upon the ruins, to be styled 
“ The Victoria Palace,” which we have every reason 
to believe, seeing that it is under the able management 
of Mr. J. A. Cave and Mr. TV. H. Holland, will be an 
improvement upon our present music halls. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

LONDON DOINGS. 

London Benevolence. —£10,000 has lately been left to estab¬ 
lish a Soup Kitchen in Shoreditch. The lady -who presented Mr. 
Spurgeon with £20,000 some time ago, to found an orphanage for 
boys, has, it is stated, offered that gentleman another large sum of 
money to found a similar institution for girls. 

The London Apprenticeship Society, since it was established 
in 1829, has assisted to apprentice 440 boys, at a cost of £7,212. 10s.. 

London Age. —Of the seventy-nine persons who died in England 
in 18G9, who had reached 100 and upwards, twelve died in 
London. 

London Deaths from Violence. —Sixty-two were registered 
in one week, in September, 1871. From the severity of the- 
weather, November 24th, 1871, Drs. Lankester and Hardwicke- 
held inquests on the bodies of seventeen persons whose deaths were- 



189 


LONDON DOINGS. 


accelerated by the severe weather; verdicts to that effect were 
returned. 

London Barmaids.— The “Barmaid Contest” took place at 
North Woolwich Gardens, where the presentation of prizes was 
made. There were twenty-eight competitors, and eight prizes were 
presented, consisting of a gold watch and guard, and lockets, 
brooches, earrings, etc. Most of the twenty-eight young women 
had received upwards of 1,000 votes each. 

London Cats.— A statement was made the other day at a vestry 
meeting of the parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, that 
there are in London 700,000 cats. 

London Accidents, etc.— In the course of the year above 2,000 
persons are taken to the London Hospitals by the Police, suffering 
from accidents and other causes. 

London Prostitutes.— A female mission in connection with the 
lleformatorv and liefuge Union Society consisting of women who 
go about in the haunts of prostitutes in order to reclaim them, 
have done considerable good in London. Above 3,000 inmates 
have been received since its establishment, who have been placed 
in homes, service, hospitals, married, returned to friends, and other¬ 
wise kindly treated and reformed. 

London South.— Bev. A. W. Snape, of Southwark, informs 
the Editor of the Tunes, November 16th, 1871, that the parishes 
south of the Thames and in immediate proximity to the river—as 
Lambeth, Southwark, Bermondsey, and Botherliithe—contain a 
population of nearly 300.000, the most part of which are of the 
very poorest description. The largest class of men consist of 
cobblers, brushdrawers, costermongers, and w r aterside labourers, 
whose pay in the summer is both small and precarious, and hence 
their miserable poverty in winter, at once almost too bad for belief 
as w r ell as harrowing to witness. The South London Visiting and 
Belief Association also states that the district over which their 
society extends its operations comprises (exclusive of Newington, 
w r hich is in the diocese of London) a population of nearly 700,000, 
among which there is a mass of sickness, poverty, and destitution. 

London Bagged in the Centre.— Mr. Gatlin, speaking of the 
Cow Cross Mission, states that 7,000 dinners had been given to 
poor and destitute children during last winter. The Mission House 
Eund of St. Clement Hanes, Clare Market district, supplies beef- 
tea, meat and wine to the poor (when sick); also distributes broken 
meat and soup during the winter months; they have likew ise a 
public laundry, night school, and parish library. 

London Crossing-Sweepers.— A man at the Haymarket in one 
day, follows and solicits from 700 persons and obtains alms from 
Go ; a boy at Trafalgar Square, solicits only 50 persons, and ob- 



190 


LONDON AT A GLANCE. 


tains alms from 35 ; a woman at Waterloo Place solicits only 85 
persons, and obtains alms from 30. 

London Street-selling.— In an area of twenty miles of streets 
there were 300 male and thirty-nine female children under thirteen 
engaged in sweeping crossings, selling newspapers, and other kinds 
of street work ; while in the same area there were G86 males and 
133 females above that age similarly employed. 

London Incendiarism. —At the Thames police court a man has 
been committed for trial for setting fire to 150 dwelling-houses, 
shops, wharves, sheds, stables, and buildings in various parts of the 
metropolis. The prisoner had committed arson in each case for the 
purpose of giving information at the fire-engine station to obtain a 
reward of Is., or called the keeper of a fire-escape to obtain the 
gratuity of 2s. 6d., which is given on these occasions. 

Columbia Market, one of the grandest and the best considered of 
Lady Burdett Coutts’s good works, appears to be a “ failure.” All 
the carving and gilding, the iron and stone work, the vast cellarage, 
the unrivalled accommodation for vendors and purchasers in the 
market, seems to have been thrown away. The salesmen were 
reluctant to come to Columbia Market, and the buyers would not 
come at all. Even the costermongers rebelled and, afterwards, 
being invited to patronise the food bazaar, turned up their noses at 
the architectural glories and the liberal regulations of Columbia, 
and preferred to buy greens in remote “ Covent Garden,” or the 
still more distant “Borough,” which they afterwards retailed at 
Somers Town or in Petticoat Lane. It was opened as a general 
market April 28th, 1868, and as a fish market February 27th, 1870. 
The site upon which it stands was formerly known as Nova Scotia 
Gardens, and the dwellings there were for the most part habited by 
the “ dangerous classes.” During the Chartist excitement, Jones 
and the great leaders used to hold their meetings there. The 
neighbourhood known as the Hollow, in the Hackney Road, was 
also swept away at the time of the construction of the market, to 
admit of proper approaches being made. The gratuitous transfer of 
the Columbia Market by the Baroness Burdett Coutts to the Cor¬ 
poration of the City of London, November 3rd, 1871, was made the 
occasion of an interesting ceremony, which was held in the market 
itself. As is now generally known, the gift of the market is a purely 
spontaneous act on the part of the baroness, unrestricted by any 
condition save that, in effect, it shall be as much as possible used for 
the purpose for which it was originally designed by her—namely, 
the supply of food, and especially fish, at a reasonable price among 
the poor of the populous district of which it is the centre. The 
corporation of London have accepted it in that spirit, with the 
understanding, however, that at the end of ten years, they shall be 
at liberty, if they think fit, to restore it to her ladyship. 


LONDON DOINGS. 


191 


London Exhibition,— The International Exhibition which 
opened in May, 1871, closed on the 30th of September last. No 
fewer than 22,517 articles sent by British exhibitors, and 1,986 
packages from the colonies and foreign countries, were received by 
the directors, and of these 3,452 were rejected by the committee of 
selection. The Exhibition was a great success in a pecuniary point of 
view, for during its existence 1,126,051 visitors were admitted. The 
greatest number of visitors on any given day was on Whit Monday, 
when 484 were admitted by ticket, and 21,462 by payment. The 
total number during Whit week was 71,390. Her Majesty’s Com¬ 
missioners for the Exhibition of 1851 announce that the second of 
the series of annual International Exhibitions will be opened at 
South Kensington, on Wednesday, the 1st of May, 1872, and will 
be closed on Monday, the 30th September following. 


DiPEOSE & BATEMAN, Printers, 13 & 17, Portugal Street, Lincoln’s Inn. 



Foolscap 4to, Price 10.9., in Antique Type , on good Toned Paper , 
and Elegantly Bound 'with Map. 

SOME ACCOUNT 

OF THE 

PARISH OF ST. CLEMENT DANES. 

PAST AND PRESENT. 

Compiled from various sources by John Diprose. 


OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 

Extracts from London Newspapers, §c. 

We should say he is an accurate and painstaking compiler.— Times, Decem¬ 
ber 25th, 1868. 

Mr. Diprose has brought together an immense mass of interesting facts.— 
Daily Neivs, January 8th, 1869. 

The time has been well chosen for its publication.— Telegraph, February 
1st, 1869. 

There are several engravings, representing buildings and streets in St. 
Clement Danes in the Olden Time, and the book is beautiful in its printing, 
its type, its pictorial embellishments, and its internal and outward ornamenta¬ 
tion .—Morning Advertiser, December 11th, 1868. 

Mr. Diprose has opened up a most interesting fund of information, valuable 
in an antiquarian as well as a modern sense .—Morning Star, December 14th, 
1868. 

The work is remarkable both how much history has been enacted within 
that district, and how many places of living interest in the affairs of to-day 
it comprises. The volume is handsomely got up.— Economist, December 
19th, 1868. 

Mr. Dipi’ose, a name long known in this district, has printed a rather 
handsome volume, containing a heap of loose records and scraps of informa¬ 
tion upon subjects of the kind belonging to local history .—The Illustrated 
London News, April 10th, 1869. 

Mr. Diprose has brought to light important illustrations of bygone times.— 
News of the World, December 20tli, 1868. 

We are glad to find that the sense of its approaching demolition has 
brought forward a painstaking parishioner, to rescue from forgetfulness the 
more prominent matters of interest which attach to it, St. Clement’s, Air. 
Diprose pleads with no less truth than warmth, is no mean parish .—Saturday 
Review, January 23rd, 1869. 

It is really an interesting book, of which the parish whose memorabilia it 
records may reasonably be proud .—City Pres*, January 30th, 1869. 

The account of St. Clement Danes, Past and Present, is beautifully got up, 
and deserves to find a place in every library, which has the least desire to add 
to its historic and antiquarian treasures.— Observer, January 31st, 1869. 

This volume tells us all about St. Clement’s Danes, its antiquities, and the 
thieves, highwaymen, debauchers, demireps, drabs and disgraceful dregs of 
pauperism and crime who succeeded them .—Weekly Dispatch, January 
2nd, 1869. 

Mr. Diprose has searched through the most dusty of all dusty records for 
his details, and the fruits of his labours consist of queer anecdotes, odd items 
of information, valuable statistics, and most interesting small biographies.— 
Lloyd's Weekly Neivspaper, January 31st, 1869. 

Air. Diprose has done timely service in drawing attention to a district long 
since degenerated into a nest of squalor, poverty, and vice .—Edinburgh 
Review, January, 1870. 





f 5 STANDARD AUTHORS, 

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When ordering, the Numbers only need be given. 


VOL. 

1 Confidences 

JBy Author of “ Carr of Carrlyon." 

2 Erlesmere; or, Contrasts of 

Character. By L. S. Lavenu. 

3 Nanette and Her Lovers 

By Talbot Gwynne. 

4 Life and Death of Silas Barn- 

starke. By Talbot Gwynne. 

6 Tender and True 

By Author of “ Clara Morison." 

7 Gilbert Massenger 

By Holme Lee. 

8 ThorneyHall By Holme Lee. 

io The Crudest Wrong of All 

By Author of “ Margaret." 
12 Hawksview By Holme Lee. 

14 Florence Templar 


16 Wheat and 

Modern Story 


By Mrs. F. Vidal. 
Tares : a 


. - 17 Guilty Peace; or, Amberhill 

^ ) By A. I. Barrowdiffe. 

j, jj 24 Moulded Out of Faults; or, 
jj Adrian L’Estrange 

(F 27 Skirmishing 

*. By Author of “ Cousin Stella." 

d 28 Farina; aLegend of Cologne 

Jlr By George Meredith. 

I 29 Normanton Authorof u Amberhill." 

31 The School for Fathers 

By Talbot Gwynne. 

32 Lena; or, the Silent Woman 

By Author of “ Beyminstre." 

34 Entanglements 
By Author of “ Mr. Arle" “ Caite,” &c. 

36 Counterparts; or, the Cross 

of Love Author of “ Mr Finf Season." 


VOL. 

40 Uncle Crotty’s Relations 

By Herbert Glyn. 

42 ABad Beginning Mrs.Macquoid. 

43 Heiress of the Blackburnfoot 

/?> Author of “ .X? Life's Love." 

50 £200 Reward. 

Author of “ Married Beneath Him." 

51 Aunt Margaret’s Trouble 

By Author of “ Mabel's Progress." 

52 On the Line and Danger 

Signal Fy Brace bridge Hemyng. 

55 Belial By a Popular Writer. 

59 Blithedale Romance 

By N. Hawthorne. 

60 Lovers of Ballyvookan 

lly Ca/l. Esmonde White. ‘ | 

62 Paul Gosslett’s Confessions f , > 

J3y Charles Lever. \ 

63 Humorous Stories ‘J 

Author of “ Married Beneath Him." , > 

64 Our Widow. 1; 

Author of “ Married Beneath Him." k ^ 

65 Tragedy of Life. 1 

I?y ft. Brenten. t < > 
!r 

By Author of “ Oz<r Widow." -i 

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66 A Marine Residence. 


38 Extremes By E.Wellsher Atkinson 

London: CHAPMAN & HALL, 193, Piccadilly. 


67 Tuggs’s at Ramsgate. 

1/y Charles Dickens. 

68 Rival Houses. 

By G. P. R. James. 

69 The Man with ‘The Plums.” ft' 

JS)' Douglas Jerrold. > 

70 Killed by Mistake. 'j* 

jPy Edward Mayhew. * > 

71 Box for the Season. , 

C. C. C/ari*. 1. 

72 Mr. Ledbury. Albert Smith. 1 j 

73 An Ocean Waif. G.M.Fenn. 




























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